Unemployment in India

Unemployment, irregular jobs and low salaries continue to hurt India while it continues to embrace labour reforms. Around 77% families have no regular wage earner and more than 67% have income less than Rs 10,000 a month. Unemployment is higher in urban areas, among women, among educated and in agriculture sector. A society where a large proportion of the labour force is unemployed suffers from poverty and vulnerability. An increase in unemployment reduces aggregate spending power, slows down the economy and it increases the vulnerability of households to deal with economic shocks. Govt's employment through various schemes like MGNREGA, at an expense of about Rs.48,000 crores, failed to remove unemployment problem due to corruption and bureaucratic apathy in implementation. 

• Unemployment Rate in India averaged 7.32% between 1983 and 2013, with a high of 9.40% in 2009 and low of 4.90% in 2013. Unemployment in India is projected to increase to 17.8 million in 2017.
• On Nov 22, 2013, as BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi at an election rally in Agra had promised creation of 1 crore jobs every year if his party won the election. 
  The BJP manifesto stated that “The country has been dragged through 10 years of jobless growth by the Congress-led UPA government. Under the broader economic revival, BJP will accord high priority to job creation and opportunities for entrepreneurship.”
  After three years of government formation, job creation remains the worst failure of the government as the job creation remained lowest in eight years.
• In 2015 only 1.35 lakh jobs were added, compared to 9.3 lakh jobs that were added in 2011-12 during UPA regime.
• About 15 lakh jobs were lost in the first four months of 2017 as the number of employed people came down from 406.5 million to 405 million. Each year 12 million people enter the workforce and 65% of India's population are under the age of 35. 
• Labour participation rate is a ratio of all adults willing to work, whether employed or unemployed, to the total population. This ratio was 48% in Jan 2016. It fell to below 45% in Nov 2016. Now it reached 43% in July 2017. Most Indians choose not to work. Low labour participation rate hinders economic growth.
• There were only seven countries in the world that had a labour participation rate of 43% or less. These are Iraq, Puerto Rico, Moldova, Syria, Timor-Leste, Samoa and Jordan. Labour participation rate in China is 71%. The world average is 63%. Other major countries are Indonesia with a labour participation rate of 67%, Pakistan (54%), Nigeria (56%), Bangladesh (62%) and Philippines (65%).
• In India, the unemployment rate measures the number of people actively looking for a job as a percentage of the labour force. In 2016, the country’s unemployment rate was 7.97%, with rural unemployment at 7.15% and urban unemployment at 9.62%.
• Shift in the pattern of employment from permanent jobs to casual and contract employment has adversely affected the wages, employment stability and social security of the workers.
• Why do so many Indians choose not to work? Indians are neither lazy nor rent-seekers by nature. The problem is in the lack of good jobs; in opportunities to work in a place where meritocracy rules and one can work hard with dignity and honesty for growth and prosperity. If such jobs are available in good numbers Indians will definitely choose to work.
• A jobless growth is neither sustainable nor desirable. It is a dangerous trend that creates social tension and disharmony. It spreads further inequality, which may lead to societal collateral damage.  
• It is the young who are losing jobs and it is the young again, who have stopped looking for jobs although they are unemployed. Young people are not ready to take jobs which are considered to be socially degrading or lowly. Such youngsters could easily stray into unlawful activities. 
• Causes of unemployment in India: (1) Growth of population (2)Underdevelopment of the economy (3) Slow growth in the agricultural sector (4) Defective system of education (5) Absence of manpower planning (6) Degeneration of village industries (7) Inappropriate technology (8) Slow growth of industrial sector (9) Immobility of labour and (10) Jobless growth.
• While unemployment is an important problem India faces, more serious problem is severe underemployment with workforce struck in low-productivity & low-wage jobs. Skilled people gets jobs easily and hence skill development among the youth is imperative.
• Achieving higher economic growth, in the range of 8% to 10%, is necessary to solve the problem of jobless growth.

Very few governments think about youth unemployment 

when they are drawing up their national plans ... Kofi Annan

Long-term unemployment makes a worker less employable.

Quite often the unemployed youth commit crimes to earn their living. Due to lack of opportunities in India, intelligent youth migrate to foreign countries. Their intellectual abilities are used by foreign countries which causes loss to India. Unemployment impacted organisational practices. It has resulted in unfair and corrupt practices in organisations such as low wages, harassment, fake muster rolls etc. The attitude of some private sectors towards employees is unfair on account of availability of surplus labour. Modi after becoming PM had enjoyed touring the world and delivering charismatic speeches and playing rogue politics in India. Midway the term he unleashed senseless demonetization which didn't achieve any of its intended objectives but left nation and its poor suffer unintended consequences. Thereafter, mangled and hurriedly rolled out GST is impacting economy and GDP growth like never before. Demonetization and GST are responsible for GDP growth slipping from 8.1% to 5.7% instead of growing to over 10%. 1% GDP growth loss roughly means loss of 1 million jobs. While recovery is certain after few years, in the meantime poor, peasants and lower classes are paying bitter price for no fault of theirs and for Modi's wild & blind adventures.