New Delhi: The proportion of jobless people rose significantly in India across education levels between 2011 and 2016, an economics professor’s analysis of two sample surveys suggests.
The findings by Santosh Mehrotra, chairperson of the Centre for Labour Studies at JNU, appear to question the Centre’s claims about job creation although the period under focus covers only the first two years of Narendra Modi’s rule, along with the last three of the UPA’s.
Mehrotra arrived at the figures by analysing data from the National Sample Survey for 2011-12 and the annual report for 2015-16 by the labour bureau, an arm of the labour ministry. (See chart)
Mehrotra has found that the nationwide average unemployment rate for all people aged above 15, educated or not, rose from 2.2 per cent in 2011-12 to 3.4 per cent in 2015-16.
He clarified that an unemployment rate of 3.4 per cent does not mean the remaining 96.6 per cent are fully employed. It only means that 3.4 per cent are completely jobless while the rest include people who may be employed fully or temporarily — for a particular period in a year or for a few hours a day and for a few days in a year.
Mehrotra has found that the unemployment rate for general graduates has more than doubled while that for graduates in technical subjects like engineering, pharmacy, management and architecture has jumped from 6.9 per cent to 11 per cent.
The unemployment rate is higher for the better educated because they are choosier about jobs compared with those less educated, who tend to be from poorer families and cannot afford to remain jobless, he explained.
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