Shashi Tharoor of the Congress on Sunday targeted the Narendra Modi government after a study claimed that the unemployment rate among graduates under 25 years of age touched a huge 42 per cent post-Covid in the country.
Quoting a news report by Live Mint, which cited the study the State of Working India 2023 by Azim Premji University’s Centre for Sustainable Employment, Tharoor wrote on X platform, “Grim news. And the government’s only answer is to wield its weapons of mass distraction so that Indians will argue over everything but unemployment and the unaffordability of essential items.”
“Post-Covid the unemployment rate is lower than it was pre-Covid, for all education levels. But it remains above 15% for graduates and more worryingly it touches a huge 42% for graduates under 25 years,” the study claimed.
‘weak growth in real labour earning’
It also outlined the post-Covid unemployment scenario in India, stating that “open unemployment rate in India has declined to 6.6 per cent in 2021-22 but there has been very weak growth in real labour earning”.
According to the study, the percentage of workers with regular wage or salaried employment showed an upward trend starting in 2004. For men, this figure increased from 18 per cent to 25 per cent, while for women, it rose from 10 per cent to 25 per cent.
Between 2004 and 2017, there were approximately 3 million new regular wage jobs generated each year. This number increased to 5 million per year between 2017 and 2019. However, this pace has decreased since 2019 due to the growth slowdown and the pandemic, it added.
It said that the unemployment rate has dropped from over 40 per cent for those under 25 years to below 5 per cent for graduates who are above 35 years old. “This indicates that eventually graduates do find jobs but the key questions are, what is the nature of jobs they find and do these match their skills and aspirations?” the report said.
(With inputs from PTI)
