It also said that labour participation was lowest since January 2016
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Construction workers in Tamil Nadu Credit: Wikimedia Commons India’s unemployment rate rose to 6.9 per cent in October 2018—the highest in two years—according to a report by Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), a business and economic database and research company.
In October 2018, an estimated 397 million people were employed across India. In October 2017, that number was 407 million. The October 2018 number is thus a decrease of 2.4 per cent.
Moreover, India’s “labour participation rate” fell to its lowest recorded level since January 2016. The labour participation rate is a measure of the proportion of adults who are willing to work. Before demonetization, India’s labour participation rate was around 47-48 per cent. In October 2018 though, it was 42.4 per cent.
The report also suggests that only 39.5 per cent of the adult population was employed in October.
It says that the number of people unemployed who are actively looking for a job has been on the rise. In October 2018, 29.5 million unemployed individuals were actively looking for jobs. This was more than the 21.6 million unemployed individuals looking for jobs in during the same period last year.
On November 8, 2016, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government had demonetised old Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes, which accounted over 86 per cent of the total Rs 16.24 trillion value of banknotes in circulation as of March 2016.
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