NEW DELHI: Only 2.1% of illiterate urban men were unemployed in 2017-18, but 9.2% of men with at least secondary education didn’t have a job. The gap was even wider among urban women — 0.8% of those uneducated were jobless whereas 20% women with secondary or higher education were not employed.
The Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) released by the National Statistic Office (NSO) on Friday shows the unemployment rate (% of labour force without a job) rising by up to 4 times between urban women who have only middle-school education and those educated up to secondary-school or more (see table). Unemployment in rural areas shows a similar pattern, though the degree of skewness is less.
The unemployment rate didn’t rise only with education level, it has also risen over time. The NSO’s Friday release also provides unemployment data for 2004-5, 2009-10 and 2011-12, adding a caution that past data shouldn’t be compared with 2017-18 figures because of several methodological changes introduced in the latest round of the survey.
Even if exact figures are not to be compared across the four years, the broad trend across time is of rise in joblessness with level of education.
“It’s not a surprise, we have known of the rising phenomenon of educated unemployment for some time. It’s just an official confirmation,” said Pronab Sen, former chief statistician of India.
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