Employment data disappoints in November

According to World Bank's modelled ILO estimates, only 17 countries are worse than India on LPR

Headline data on employment in November 2021 is mildly encouraging but the details underlying it are quite disappointing. The encouraging signs are that the unemployment rate declined from 7.8 per cent in October to 7 per cent in November; the employment rate rose by a whisker — from 37.28 per cent to 37.34 per cent. This translated into employment increasing by 1.4 million, from 400.8 million to 402.1 million in November 2021.

The first disappointment is that the labour participation rate (LPR) has slipped: from 40.41 per cent in October to 40.15 per cent in November. This is the second consecutive