India’s unemployment rate falls sharply to 6.57%, lowest since March 2021: CMIE – Times of India

MUMBAI: India’s unemployment rate saw a sharp drop to 6.57 per cent in January, the lowest since March 2021, as the country gradually eases restrictions following a drop in Omicron cases, according to CMIE.
According to data from independent think-tank Center for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), unemployment in urban India stood at 8.16 per cent in January, the lowest in rural areas at 5.84 per cent.
In December, the unemployment rate stood at 7.91 per cent, with urban at 9.30 per cent and rural at 7.28 per cent.
Telangana recorded the lowest unemployment rate at 0.7 per cent in January, followed by Gujarat (1.2 per cent), Meghalaya (1.5 per cent) and Odisha (1.8 per cent).
However, Haryana had the highest unemployment rate at 23.4 per cent, followed by Rajasthan at 18.9 per cent.
CMIE estimated the number of unemployed in India to be 53 million by December 2021, of whom a large proportion were women.
CMIE MD and CEO Mahesh Vyas, in his analysis of December data, said 35 million people were actively looking for work in December 2021, of which 23 per cent or 8 million were women.
An equally important challenge is to provide employment to an additional 17 million people who were not employed and were willing to work when work was available, although they were not actively looking for employment, Vyas said. .