Lockdown impact: Every fourth person in India is unemployed

Currently, every fourth person in India is unemployed, revealed the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) on Tuesday (May 26) in its unemployment data.

Urban India is ailing more with 26.3 per cent of unemployment while rural parts of the country have reported 23.7 per cent of the unemployment rate.

Due to ongoing nationwide lockdown, the unemployment rate had been above 20 per cent for over two months now. Even as relaxations in lockdown were announced, restarting the rural economy did not seem to have made any dent in the unemployment in the country.

On May 17, before relaxations were given to businesses the unemployment rate was at 26.3 and 22.8 per cent for urban and rural India respectively. It is reported to be 26.3 and 23.6 per cent by May 25.

Rural unemployment was expected to increase as the industries were allowed to restart as well as MNREGA works to have started after May 17.

The states with more industrial units like Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Gujarat saw a steep decline in employment post lockdown. Gujarat had an unemployment rate of 6.7 in March which shot up to 18.7 in April.

Maharashtra saw more than a three-fold increase from 5.8 to 20.9 per cent. Karnataka, on the other hand, reported 29.8 per cent of unemployment in April from a mere 3.5 per cent in March. The state has one of the best track records in keeping the unemployment rate low for years.

Related news: 5 crore Indians lost jobs in 2 weeks of lockdown, says survey

The migrant source states – Bihar (46.6) and Jharkhand (47.1) – have reported more than 50 per cent unemployment for the current month. Odisha reported a 23.8 per cent rate while UP reported 21.5 per cent of the unemployment rate. Tamil Nadu has the highest rate of unemployment for the current month at 49.8 per cent.

The ground reality could be worse. The reason could be the ‘disguised unemployment’ which gets slipped off during the normal calculation.

Disguised unemployment means when the labour is employed within a company or institution but is not actually contributing to the output of the organization. This had been the case for many industries for over two months. Thus, the crisis looks much bigger.

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