New Delhi: As many as fifty lakh men lost their jobs between November 2016, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the demonetisation exercise, and 2018. The trends of the start in the decline in jobs coincides with the note ban exercise but “no direct relationship can be established based only on this,” according to the report “State of Working India 2019″ released by the Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru.
“Accounting for the increase in working age population, the decline in the WPR (workforce participation rate) amounts to a net loss of 5 million jobs during this period… When we take women into account, the number of jobs lost will be higher. The job losses are higher when women are also included in the analysis,” the report said.
According to the report, unemployment in the country has risen steadily since 2011. The overall unemployment rate stood at around 6% in 2018, double between what the numbers were between 2000 and 2011. The report says, “Whether or not this decline was caused by demonetisation, it is definitely a cause for concern and calls for urgent policy intervention”.
“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,” the report read, indicating that joblessness may not only be a problem of only the educated section.
“While open unemployment may still be low among the less educated, there has been a marked tendency to drop out of the labour force for this section, presumably due to loss of work opportunities,” the report said.
Earlier,according to NSSO’s (National Sample Survey Office) periodic labour force survey(PLFS) report cited by Business Standard, it was reported that India’s unemployment rate touches a 45 year high with 6.1 percent during 2017-2018.
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