New Delhi: Unemployment rate in India has doubled in eight years to 2018 as 50 lakh jobs were lost in last two years beginning with demonetisation in November 2016, a new research by a privately run university said.
A report by Azim Premji University researchers led by Amit Basole said with the government not releasing results of the new high-frequency Periodic Labour Force Survey conducted by the National Sample Survey Office, they used data from the Consumer Pyramids Survey of the Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy to understand the employment situation between 2016 and 2018.
“Unemployment, in general, has risen steadily post-2011. Both the PLFS and the CMIE-CPDX report the overall unemployment rate to be around 6 per cent in 2018, double of what it was in the decade from 2000 to 2011,” the report further said.
A report published by Azim Premji University’s Centre for Sustainable Employment has claimed that since demonetisation in 2016, about 50 lakh men have lost their jobs in the country. It claimed that the “beginning of the decline in jobs” coincided with the note ban exercise but “no direct relationship can be established based only on this”.
Since demonetisation in 2016, about 50 lakh men have lost their jobs, shows new report The report said labour force participation rates were lower among women. The report said the “beginning of the decline in jobs” coincided with the government’s demonetisation exercise in 2016, “although no direct causal relationship can be established based only on these trends”.
The State of Working India 2019 report said that unemployment in the country has risen steadily since 2011. The overall unemployment rate was pegged at around 6% in 2018, double what it was between 2000 and 2011. The report was released on Tuesday in Bengaluru, where the university is located.
The report used data from the Consumer Pyramids Survey of the Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy or CMIE-CPDX as official data on unemployment from the Periodic Labour Force Survey conducted by the National Sample Survey Organisation have not been released. Findings of the Periodic Labour Force Survey which were leaked in January also recorded the unemployment rate in India at a 45-year-high of 6.1% in 2017-’18.
Researchers from the university used unit-level data from the Consumer Pyramids Survey of the Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy (CMIE), which covers around 5.22 lakh individuals quarterly, to get an outline of unemployment and what could be done to address it.
The report said unemployment is prevalent among the higher educated and those in the age group of 20 and 24. This age group accounts for 13.5% of the working population of urban men, but 60% of the unemployed.
