Unemployment
The Bharatiya Janata Party’s 2014 election manifesto listed job creation as a “high priority” task and earmarked manufacturing, infrastructure and housing as sectors with potential to achieve the target.
However, India’s unemployment rate climbed to 6.1% in 2017-’18 – the highest in 45 years. Periodic Labour Force Surveys done by the government show it further rose to 20.8% in April-June 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic before dropping to 3.2% in 2022-’23 – nearly half of the 2017-’18 levels.
However, monthly surveys conducted by private think tank Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy have consistently found unemployment rates to be much higher than the government numbers.
Economists and policy researchers rely on CMIE data because of the lack of adequate and timely government data. The Modi government scrapped the annual Employment-Unemployment Survey in 2017 and discontinued the Labour Bureau’s quarterly enterprise surveys in March 2018.
Economists have also expressed concerns over the rise of the share of the workforce engaged in self-employment, which, contrary to criteria set by the International Labour Organisation, includes “unpaid helpers in household enterprises”.
The share of self-employed people in India’s workforce rose from 49.5% in 2013-’14, when the Congress was in power, to 57.3% in 2022-’23. During the same period, the share of salaried workers declined from 23.1% to 20.9%.
The State of Working India 2023 report found that economic…
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