According to an analysis report by Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), 11.8 million people in India lost their jobs in the year 2018.
This slump affected vulnerable groups such as women, daily-wage workers, agricultural labourers the most. Out of all those who lost their jobs, 8.8 million were women, while men bore only 2.2 million job losses in comparison, reported Business Today.
Most job losses took place in rural India “An estimated 9.1 million jobs were lost in rural India while the loss in urban India was 1.8 million jobs. Rural India accounts for two-thirds of India’s population, but it accounted for 84 per cent of the job losses,” the report said.
It is noteworthy that while rural men and women as well as urban women suffered job losses, urban men were not affected at all. 6.5 million rural women lost their jobs, whereas the figure for urban women was at 2.3 million. Rural men lost 2.3 million jobs, but urban men actually gained 5,00,000 jobs.
“So, the break-down of employment statistics by the various attributes of respondents discussed above tells us that a person who lost the job in 2018 mostly fits a profile like – is a woman, particularly a woman in rural India, is uneducated and is engaged as a wage labourer or a farm labourer or is a small-scale trader and is aged either less than 40 years or more than 60 years,” said the report.
“India’s unemployment rate shot up to 7.4 per cent in December 2018. This is the highest unemployment rate we’ve seen in 15 months. The rate has increased sharply from the 6.6 per cent clocked in November,” it read.
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