Unemployment rate doubled since 2011: Report

NEW DELHI: Unemployment rate in India has doubled in eight years to 2018 as 50 lakh lost jobs 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 (PLFS) conducted by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), they used data from the Consumer Pyramids Survey of the Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy (CMIC-CPDX) 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 posted on the university’s website said.

India’s unemployed, it said, were mostly the higher educated and the young.

“Our analysis of CMIE-CPDX reveals that five million men lost their jobs between 2016 and 2018, the beginning of the decline in jobs coinciding with demonetisation in November 2016, although no direct causal relationship can be established based only on these trends,” it said.

A leaked report of the periodic labour force survey by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) had shown unemployment at a 45-year high of more than 6 per cent in 2017-18 but the Government has officially not yet released the report, saying the version reported in the media was not final. (AGENCIES)