Unemployment rate is a huge 27.1%: CMIE

Mahesh Vyas of Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy has said that unemployment in India was at 27.1% as on May 3.  This is the highest since Independence.  

As per the economist, from small traders and wage labourers to salaried employees, everyone is staring at an uncertain future.  “Daily wagers, as much as large entrepreneurs, will be affected by the extended lockdown,” Vyas has been paraphrased as saying by The Print.  

“When jobs evaporate in other sectors, people go back to farms which seem to have an infinite capacity to absorb labour; but that is mostly disguised unemployment,” Vyas writes in Business Standard.  The agriculture sector is a hotspot of disguised unemployment.  

“A massive 9.1 crore (mostly small traders and wage labour) lost their livelihood in April 2020.  One in five salaried persons lost his job in the wake of the pandemic,” Vyas has been quoted as saying.  

Taking up employment-intensive measures, especially in the manufacturing sector, is the need of the hour!