84 per cent of these job losses happened in rural areas
Is unemployment in India on the rise? A new report by Centre for Monitoring of Indian Economy, says in 2018, the number of people unemployed in India increased by nearly 11 million. This increase, the report says, is India’s worst showing in the last 27 months.
This report, titled Unemployment Rate in India, said from 407.9 million employed individuals in 2017 the number came down to 397 million in 2018. But the biggest brunt of unemployment was witnessed in the rural areas, which accounted for 84 per cent of all the jobs lost. This amounts to nearly 9.1 million jobs. Most of those who lost their jobs were uneducated—wage labourers, agricultural labourers and small traders, and those who were mostly below 40 years of age or above 59 years.
Women were hit harder then men. In rural areas 6.5 million women became unemployed compared to 2.3 million in urban areas. A sizeable 3.7 million or 34 per cent of these lost jobs were salaried employees. At the end of 2018, India unemployment rate had touched 7.4 per cent.
Tripura followed by Haryana had the highest number of unemployed people. Tripura had 28.8 per cent of its population which was unemployed while Haryana’s numbers stood at 24.4 per cent.
India has been struggling to generate employment in the last few years. In April 2018, the India’s Labour Bureau had declared that India had the world’s largest unemployed population. Another report prepared by the Azim Premji University stated that India’s 2018 unemployment rate has been the highest in the last 20 years.
Agricultural distress has been one of the biggest reasons for the loss of jobs. The current government had promised to create 20 million new jobs. But this new report will give fresh ammunition to the oppostion parties to attack the government for not fullfilling this promise.
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