Rising unemployment is the biggest challenge for India

One of the top Twitter trends over the past few hours has been “#modi_rojgar_do”. The hashtag essentially asks Prime Minister Narendra Modi to provide more employment.

Daily Current Affairs Quiz 2021

Just before the Covid crisis at the end of 2019-20 financial year, India had (according to the data provided by Mahesh Vyas of Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy) around 403.5 million employed people and around 35 million (or 3.5 crore) openly unemployed people in the country.

To this existing pool, each year India adds roughly 10 million (or 1 crore) new job seekers.

But over the past year, several million have lost their jobs. As a result, as of January 2021, India had only about 400 million employed.

If we look at Vyas/CMIE data, which is being compiled since 2016, the total number of employed people in India has been steadily coming down. It was 407.3 million in 2016-17 and then fell to 405.9 million in 2017-18, and to 400.9 million at the end of 2018-19.

India has an labour force participation rate (LFPR) of just about 40%. In other words, in India just 40% of the 20 million joining the working-age group each year actually come forward looking for a job.