Unemployment is one of the major issues in our country with more than 31 crores of people being jobless. The country’s government is trying to decrease unemployment rates through the creation of new government jobs and encouraging startups. “The country’s urban unemployment rate between January and March this year fell to 9.3 percent, the lowest in at least four quarters,” according to an unpublished government report reviewed by Reuters.
The numbers, recorded in the statistics ministry’s quarterly jobs report, could provide some relief to Prime Minister Narendra Modi who has faced criticism for not being able to create enough jobs amid slowing economic growth. The urban unemployment rate of the January-March quarter compared with 9.9 percent in the preceding quarter.
Rural Unemployment in India is divided into three parts: Open, seasonal and disguised. Open Unemployment is when workers are openly looking for a job but not getting opportunities. Seasonal Unemployment is when workers are unemployed for a certain season like our farmers are unemployed for 3 to 8 months. And Disguised Unemployment is a situation where more than required workers are working.
Quarterly data before the April-June 2018 survey period is not available and the January-March quarter’s rate is the lowest since then. The report, which is likely to be published soon, did not assess rural unemployment. The estimates were arrived at using the so-called “current weekly status” method which gives an average picture of unemployment in a short period of seven days preceding the survey period, the document said.
The latest report, reviewed by Reuters, contains jobs assessment for the first quarter of this year. The fall in the unemployment rate, by weekly status methodology basis, came as employment among regular wage employees and a section of self-employed workers increased during the period, the statistics ministry report showed.
Still, the labor force participation rate – the percentage of population making up the labor force – which had slowly edged up between April and December last year, recorded a dip to 36 percent during the March quarter, the report showed, potentially reflecting weak economic growth in Asia’s third-largest economy.
India’s economic growth fell to an over four-year low of 5.8 percent in the January-March period. Subsequently, it fell further to 5 percent in the following quarter.