Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, May 2: The unemployment rate in India increased to 7.83 percent in April from 7.60 percent in March, according to figures released on Sunday by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE).
According to the figures, the urban unemployment rate increased to 9.22% in April from 8.28% the previous month, while the rural jobless rate decreased to 7.18% from 7.29%.
The northern state of Haryana has the highest unemployment rate of 34.5 percent, followed by Rajasthan with 28.8 percent and Bihar with 21.1 percent. Meanwhile, the lowest rates of unemployment were found in Himachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Assam, with unemployment rates of 0.2 percent, 0.6 percent, and 1.2 percent, respectively. Sluggish domestic demand and the slow rate of economic recovery amid rising costs, according to economists, have hit job chances.
According to Shilan Shah, an economist at Capital Economics in Singapore, retail inflation hit a 17-month high of 6.95 percent in March and is expected to peak around 7.5 percent later this year. In June, he expects the central bank to raise the repo rate.
Because the government does not disclose its own monthly estimates, economists and policymakers closely monitor the data from the Mumbai-based CMIE.
They’ve also been keeping an eye on the declining labour participation rate, which measures the proportion of persons working or looking for job among the working population. According to CMIE’s prior data, this fell to 39.5 percent in March 2022 from 43.7 percent in March 2019, as millions of people lost their employment during the pandemic.