Unemployment highest among people aged 15-29 years: NSO report

In January-March 2019, the quarter from which latest data is available, the survey estimates 22.5 per cent unemployment rate in people aged 15 to 29 years.

Unemployment among people aged 15-29 years was recorded as the highest during the January-March 2019 quarter, according to the latest Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) released by the National Statistical Organisation (NSO).

In January-March 2019, the quarter from which latest data is available, the survey estimates 22.5 per cent unemployment rate in people aged 15 to 29 years.

The number of self-employed individuals also dropped marginally from 38.9 per cent in April-June 2018 to 37.7 per cent in the latest PLFS survey released by NSO.

On the other hand, the share of regular wage earners and salaried employees in the total urban workforce increased marginally from 48.3 per cent to 50 per cent, indicating slow growth.

Latest data released by the NSO also showed that women fared better than men in terms of regular wage earnings and employment.

During the last four quarters — from April 2018 till March 2019 — salaried women working in the organised sector saw 2.1 per cent increase compared to 1.5 percent for male workers.

Pronab Sen, former chief statistician of India, said, “Let there be a time series and let the data stabilise and only then can we derive any trend.”

An analysis of states done by NSO shows Kerela and Jammu and Kashmir have the highest rate of joblessness in the country while Gujarat and Karnataka had the least joblessness.

The estimate of the workforce in the survey was done by taking into account that the person worked for at least 1 hour on any day during the 7 days preceding the date of the survey.