Unemployment rate highest in 2-years: CMIE

According to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) unemployment rate has risen up to 6.9% in the country as of October, making it the highest in two years. The labour participation rate a measure of the proportion of adults willing to work fell to 42.4%, the lowest since January 2016, said the thinktank.

The thinktank stated “From 47%-48%, labour participation rate fell sharply after demonetization, and it has still not recovered,” the study said. “The small improvement in labour statistics seen in September turned out to be short-lived. October statistics point to a continuation of the deterioration in labour markets seen earlier.”

Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy in its bulletin said ‘Annually, 12 million people enter India’s labour markets’ At 397 million, the number of people estimated to have been employed during October 2018 was 2.4% lower than the 407 million employed in October 2017. “This sharp fall in the employment rate in October is perhaps the most worrisome measure of the labour market.”

In October 2018, the count of the unemployed people actively looking for jobs almost doubled to 29.5 million from a low of 14 million in July 2017, CMIE said.

Aditya Narayan Mishra, CEO, CIEL HR Services, while commenting on CMIE’s latest unemployment data, said, “October-to-December is traditionally the job creation period across sectors in the Indian economy, and the mismatch between demand and supply of labour is hence worrying.” Annually, almost 12 million people enter the country’s labour markets and job creation hasn’t been robust enough to support this.