42% Graduates Under 25 Years Remains Jobless In Post-Covid India (Image:Pixabay.com/photos)
The post-covid condition in India has increased the unemployment rate of the nation, as many as 42% of graduates under the age of 25 remained jobless after the pandemic, reports a labour market study released on Wednesday.
The study also provides statistical datas supporting that, the pace of job creation also marked a significant decrease following the global economic slowdown of the particular period.
“Post-Covid the unemployment rate is lower than it was pre-Covid, for all education levels. But it remains above 15% for graduates and more worryingly it touches a huge 42% for graduates under 25 years”, says the report.
The report, ‘State of Working India 2023: Social Identities and Labour Market Outcomes’, was published on Wednesday by the Centre for Sustainable Employment of the Bengaluru-based Azim Premji University.
According to the study, “the past few years have been very eventful ones for the economy. Even prior to the unprecedented shock delivered by the Covid-19 pandemic, the Indian economy was experiencing its most prolonged growth slowdown in recent decades”. It also expressed that a large variation in the rate of unemployment exists even among people with higher education, though post-covid figures remain below the pre-covid levels.
“The slowdown, severe though it was, was completely overshadowed by the impact of the 2020 nationwide lockdown during the pandemic”, the research copy added.
Other Major observations of the report:
- Since 2019, the pace of regular wage jobs creation has decreased due to the growth slowdown and the pandemic.
- The period between 2004 and 2019 observed decent employment, but later interrupted by the pandemic which caused larger growth in distress employment.
- The period since 2004 saw a more rapid increase in salaried work, going from 15% of the workforce to 25% by 2018 before falling due to the pandemic.
- Female Workforce Participation Rate (WPR), especially the condition of rural women, also witnessed a slow down in the pandemic time period.
- The last few years saw the creation of more formal salaried
jobs than earlier. But women were compelled to enter self-employment due to distress caused by the growth slowdown
and the pandemic. - In 2020-21 regular wage employment fell by 2.2 million.
- The pandemic forced workers to fall back on agriculture or on self-employment in order to survive.
- The increased incidence of self-employment caused by the pandemic was back to pre-pandemic levels for men by 2022 but remained elevated for women.
- Growth was generally slowing down as well as given the pandemic shock, demand in the product market actually collapsed even as supply of labour to the self-employed sector grew.
- There is a rise in agricultural employment in the last period due to the pandemic. The share of non-agricultural employment rose from 37 percent in 1983-84 to 60 percent just prior to the pandemic in 2018-19.
- With the coming of pandemic women became even more likely to be engaged in unpaid work
