India’s unemployment rate falls amid easing of lockdown

The country’s urban unemployment rate fell 5.0 percentage points to 9.7% month-on-month for the week which ended on June 13.
By: | June 17, 2021
Topics: India | Job Cuts | News | Recruitment

Data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) showed that the country’s urban unemployment rate stood at 14.7% in May.  

The fall in the unemployment rate could be attributed to the easing of restrictions on operations in the informal sector and the withdrawal of people from the workforce in the absence of decent jobs, said economists. 

If the rate is compared on a weekly basis, there is a downward trend for the past three weeks. Data from CMIE’s website showed that the urban unemployment rate was 17.88%, 14.40% and 9.70% for the weeks which ended on May 30, June 6 and June 13, respectively. 

On a month-on-month basis, the unemployment rate in rural India fell by 2.4 percentage points in the week which ended on June 13 to 8.23% compared with that of 10.63% in May, according to Hindustan Times. 

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Figures for the country as a whole showed a marginal drop in unemployment rate from 11.9% in May compared to the 11.6% on June 15 based on a 30-day moving average, data from CMIE’s website showed.