About 21 million jobs lost in India over 5 months

Around 21 million salaried workers in India lost their jobs between April to August, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE).

India has been hard-hit by the COVID-19 pandemic since going on a lockdown to curb the outbreak, with its businesses and tourism industry coming to a standstill. 

And CMIE revealed that the job losses are not only confined to only the support staff among salaried employees but also include industrial workers and white-collar workers, CMIE revealed.

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“The deficit of 21 million jobs is the biggest among all types of employment. About 4.8 million salaried jobs were lost in July and then in August, another 3.3 million jobs were gone,” the CMIE said.

The CMIE data also revealed that the total number of salaried jobs in August fell from 86 million to 65 million in the full year of 2019-20.

Unemployment rate in India also rose to 8.35% in August from 7.40% in the previous month. Urban unemployment rate inched higher to 9.83% in August from 9.37% in July, while rural unemployment rate increased to 7.65% in August from 6.51%.

With the country still grappling with the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of those who lost their jobs have resorted to farming, with employment in farming rising by 14 million by August as against 111 million employees during 2019-20.