The India Employment Report 2024: Unemployment in India & Challenges:

Why in News?  The India Employment Report 2024 was  brought out by the Institute for Human Development (IHD) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

The unemployment rate rises with a rise in education levels ,There is  28 per cent unemployment rate among graduates and above (the proportion of women being higher).

What the report says?

• Employment quality has improved in all states
• There is an increase in the share of non-farm employment (and decline in agriculture employment)
• the female workforce participation (FWFP) rate has increased from 24.5 per cent in 2019 to 37.0 in 2023
• In comparison to the wages of regular workers, the wages of casual workers increased even during 2019-22.
• Unemployment and underemployment rates increased till 2018 but declined thereafter. The unemployment rate has declined from 6 per cent 2018 to 3.2 per cent in 2023. This also holds for the youth unemployment rate, which also decreased from 17.8 per cent to 10 per cent over this period.
• Despite an improvement in employment conditions over time, jobs largely remain informal and of lower productivity. Over 90 per cent employment is informal, and 83 per cent are in the informal sector .

Way forward & recommendation of the report:

The report has recommended some policy measures such as

(a) making production and growth more employment-intensive with emphasis on labour-based manufacturing and appropriate focus on employment-generating services and agriculture;

(b) improving the quality of jobs;

(c) overcoming labour market inequalities, particularly by boosting women’s employment and effective policies to tackle NEET;

(d) making systems for skills training and active labour market policies more effective, particularly by bridging the supply-demand gap in jobs and active involvement of the private sector; and

(e) generating reliable statistics so as to better capture the complexities of the changing pattern of labour market due to rapid technological change.