| Rural-Urban Variation in Unemployment |
- At 7.13%, the rural unemployment rate for April 2021 is lower than the urban figure of 9.8%.
- The month of May has seen the rates rise further at the national level. As of May 21, the 30-day moving average for overall unemployment was 10.3%, with the relevant figures for urban and rural areas at 12.2% and 9.4%, respectively.
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| Gender variation in unemployment |
- Women tend to face a double challenge, with lower labour participation and a higher unemployment rate for females compared with males (for ages above 15).
- For the January-April 2021 period, urban female LPR was 7.2% compared with the urban male’s 64.8%, while urban female unemployment was 18.4% against the urban male unemployment rate of 6.6%, CMIE data showed.
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| Agriculture Sector |
- Agriculture was the saving grace during the first wave, but it is not so during the second one.
- April 2020 saw this sector being the only one to add jobs — the count of those employed in the agriculture sector had gone up by 6 million or 5% compared with the average count in FY20.
- In April 2021, agriculture shed 6 million jobs compared to a month earlier. This figure ties in with reports of the hinterland being far more affected by the pandemic this year
- MGNREGA data showed that April saw an uptick in the demand for jobs — 2.7 crore households signed up for work in April 2021, rising from 1.3 crore a year earlier — as reverse migration of labour picked up, resulting in availability of hands in the rural parts.
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| Salaried Class |
- The cumulative loss of salaried jobs since the pandemic began is pegged at 12.6 million, according to CMIE data
- The trend continues with April 2021 seeing a drop 3.4 million jobs from the level in March 2021.
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| Variation across States |
- Haryana recorded the highest unemployment rate in April 2021 at 35%, as per CMIE data, followed by Rajasthan at 28%, Delhi at 27.3%, and Goa at 25.7%.
- Significantly, Gujarat, which, like the above States, also witnessed the ferocity of the pandemic’s second wave, saw unemployment at an appreciably lower level of 1.8%.
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