Urban jobless rate in 7 states, J&K acutely high -Surya Sarathi Ray

-Financial Express

Pan-India unemployment down since the second wave of Covid-19.

Even as there has been a steady decline in urban unemployment since the highly infective second Covid wave, joblessness in seven states of Rajasthan, Bihar, Kerala, Uttarakhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Himachal Pradesh, besides Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, remained at very high levels, as per the periodic labour force survey (PLFS) data.

These states, where unemployment has consistently been higher than the national average, saw a more gradual decline of the bane, primarily because slower economic growth resulted in fewer job opportunities. Also, they showed much lower resilience to absorb the pandemic shock.

At the pan-India level, urban unemployment fell sharply from 12.7% in April-June 2021 (second Covid wave period) to 7.6% in April-June 2022, as per the PLFS. However, the seven states and J&K reported double digit unemployment rate all through the period.

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