India is facing a severe downfall in the employment rate. A recent report published by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) revealed that 1.1 crore jobs were lost in the year 2018. The report exhibited that the unemployment rates have sharply inclined.
The report said that India’s unemployment rate rose up to 7.4 % in December 2018. This is the highest unemployment rate in 15 months. Soon after the report was published, the Central government received criticism for failing to keep their promise of providing two crore jobs every year. The result puts a bad light on the current government which is gearing up to continue ruling for the next five years.
The number of people who had jobs at the end of December 2017 was 40.79 cr when compared with the same period in 2018 which was 39.7 cr, felling 1.09 cr short. The employment started declining from November 2017. The employment dropped by 1.03 cr during November 2017 and September 2018.
Rural India suffered the most
The report said that both the rural and urban India suffered unemployment, but the job losses in rural India was more. Rural India which comprises two-thirds of India’s population faced job losses of 84%. In 2018, rural India registered 91 lakh jobs losses, whereas urban India saw 18 lakh job losses.
Women were the biggest victim of this unemployment trend. In 2018, among the 1.1 cr who lost their jobs, 88 lakh were women whereas only 22 lakhs were men. Around 65 lakh rural woman lost their jobs whereas, 23 lakh urban women lost their jobs. On the other hand, rural men lost 23 lakh jobs, and urban men gained 5 lakh jobs. People ageing between 40 and 59 managed to escape the turmoil.
Of all the categories of people who fell under uneducated and were wage labourer or agricultural labourers took the biggest hit. Lack of job opportunities and increase in numbers of candidature is further fueling the unemployment rate. For instance, around 19 lakh aspirants applied for 63000 job openings in Indian railroad. Union minister Nitin Gadkari recently said that Unemployment is the biggest problem faced by the country.
Demonetisation effects linger on
The unemployment rate doesn’t give a complete picture of the labour market conditions in the country. Better ways to measure are the labour participation rate and employment rate. The labour participation rate is a measure of the number of persons whether employed or unemployed and those who are actively looking for employment as a per cent of the total population of the age 15 years and above. Before the demonetisation, Labour participation rate was around 47-48 per cent but fell sharply after it and has still not recovered.
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