Unemployment Rate Shot Up to 23.5% in April: CMIE Survey

The highest unemployment was in Tamil Nadu (49.8 %), followed by Jharkhand (47.1 %) and Bihar (46.6 %).

According to a CMIE survey, the unemployment rate appears to have worsened over the lockdown.

(Photo: iStockphoto)

India’s unemployment rate has risen to 23.5 percent in April 2020, after five weeks of the nationwide coronavirus lockdown, a survey conducted by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) showed.

This is a 14.8 percentage point rise from the previous month. At the beginning of March, the unemployment rate was at 8.7 per cent — the highest unemployment rate in 43 months. But the situation appears to have worsened over the next few weeks as India went into the one of the strictest lockdowns across the world to deal with the COVID-19 crisis.

According to the report the highest unemployment was in Tamil Nadu (49.8 percent), followed by Jharkhand (47.1 percent) and Bihar (46.6 percent).

The unemployment rate in urban India stood at 24.95 percent, while in rural India it was 22.89 percent.

While the unemployment rate has been somewhat volatile as it bounced between 21 and 26 percent during the lockdown period, labour participation has declined in every week during the lockdown, CMIE’s findings show.

The labour participation rate dropped from 42.6 percent from just before the lockdown to 35.4 percent by 26 April, implying that 7.2 percent of the working age population have quit the labour markets during this lockdown.

The working age population is a little over a billion people in India. This implies that over 72 million people (7.2 crore) have quit the labour markets in a month.