Bengaluru: Nearly 50 lakh people in India lost their jobs between 2016-2018, a report said highlighting that the "beginning of the decline" coincided with demonetisation, although "no direct causal relationship could be established" between the trends.
The report by Azim Premji University's titled State of Working India was based on the CMIE-CPDX data that highlighted India's unemployed was mostly the youth. "In general, women are much worse affected than men. They have higher unemployment rates, as well as lower labour force participation rates," it added.
Speaking to ETV BHARAT, Dr Amit Basole, Lead Author of the Report, said, “ ..in this report, we have analysed the employment situation during the past two years. We have concluded that the percentage of men working started falling from early 2017 and has continued to fall”.
To overcome the current job crisis, the report proposed new policy ideas, including, – urban employment guarantee programme similar to rural counterpart MGNREGA, expansion of public services like health and education and comprehensive industrial policy to revive the manufacturing sector in the country.
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The report revealed that unemployment, in general, has risen steadily post 2011. Both the Periodic Labour Force Survey 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."
"Among urban women, graduates are 10 per cent of the working age population but 34 per cent of the unemployed. The age group 20-24 years is hugely over-represented among the unemployed.
"Among urban men, for example, this age group accounts for 13.5 per cent of the working age population but 60 per cent of the unemployed."
Besides, the report noted that "in addition to rising open unemployment among the higher educated, the less educated (and likely, informal) workers have also seen job losses and reduced work opportunities since 2016.
