New Delhi: The Center for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) in its weekly analysis said the unemployment rate in India rose to 8.3 per cent in August, with more than 1.9 million people losing their jobs.
According to CMIE, the loss was “essentially in agricultural jobs and reflects the seasonal nature and uncertainty of employment due to an erratic monsoon this year”.
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CMIE said employment in agriculture declined by 8.7 million in August, while non-farm jobs increased by 6.8 million at the same time.
CMIE said employment as business persons increased by about 4 million and as small traders and daily wage workers by 2.1 million, with salaried jobs showing a marginal increase of 0.7 million during the month.
CMIE further said that the industrial sector left 2.5 million less jobs in August last month as compared to July 2021 with employment in the industrial sector.
“It seems that factories are not a reliable source of employment,” CMIE said.
According to CMIE, the services sector provided 8.5 million additional jobs last month with personal non-professional services and retail trade being the major absorbers of employment within the services sector.
The manufacturing sector lost 0.94 million jobs last month.
CMIE said that the manufacturing sector has permanently lost around 10 million jobs in the lockdown induced by the Kovid-19 pandemic.
The pre-pandemic manufacturing sector employed around 40 million which fell to 21 million in April 2020 and quickly returned to less than 30 million by July 2020.
The second wave of Covid slashed employment in the manufacturing sector to 26 million, before recovering to around 29 million in July. However, employment declined to 28 million in August.
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CMIE described this decline in August as “disappointing”, adding that the nearly one million job drop from the sector last month shows “how incredible manufacturing jobs have become”.
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