NEW DELHI – The unemployment rate in India was 3.8 percent last year, suggests data released recently by the Labour Bureau. The report revealed that unemployment rises with education level to 10 percent among graduates, and still higher for backward castes.
According to the ‘Employment and Unemployment Survey 2012’, India’s official unemployment rate is 3.8 percent, with rural areas having an unemployment rate of 3.4 percent and urban areas having an unemployment rate of 5 percent. It was noted that unemployment is higher among women than among men; 6.9 percent for women as against 2.9 percent for men.
Using the labour bureau numbers it was seen that unemployment rises steadily with education level. While unemployment among the illiterate was noted to be 1.2 percent, unemployment among graduates was 9.4 percent and among post-graduates it was 10 percent. In the United States and United Kingdom, where recession has led to poor job growth, the unemployment rate for graduates is at a record high, but it is still under 5 percent, in comparison.
For urban India, graduate unemployment was noted to be 8.2 percent while unemployment among post-graduates was at 7.7 percent.
Santosh Mehrotra, economist and director-general of the Institute of Applied Manpower Research, an autonomous institution under the Planning Commission said these findings are consistent with those of the National Sample Survey 2009-10 which show that the higher the level of education, the higher the open unemployment. He was quoted telling TOI “The illiterate are the poorest and the poorest simply cannot afford to be unemployed, so they do some work, even if they are under-employed.” He added that “As a result, in poor economies like ours, you see very little open unemployment.”
