Team Blitz India
NEW DELHI: After falling for two consecutive quarters, India’s urban unemployment rate stagnated at 6.6 per cent in Q2 (July-September), thus reflecting a slight deterioration in labour markets.
This stagnation comes amid a swelling labour force, meaning that the urban economy was not able to generate a commensurate number of jobs during the quarter.
However, the unemployment rate in current weekly status (CWS) terms for those above 15 years of age in the September quarter is still the lowest recorded in nearly five years, since the National Statistical Office (NSO) began releasing India’s quarterly urban jobless rate in December 2018.
The jobless rate in urban areas has been steadily declining since the high of 12.6 per cent recorded in the Covid-affected April-June quarter of FY22, the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data, released by the NSO showed.
The unemployment rate among men increased slightly to 6 per cent during the quarter from 5.9 per cent in the previous quarter, whereas the jobless rate among women declined to 8.6 per cent from 9.1 per cent. These figures have also been declining since the April-June quarter of FY22, when they were estimated at 12.2 per cent and 14.3 per cent, respectively.
