India's labour market distress

Implications for growth story will be severe

While the effects of the two most devastating waves of the Covid-19 pandemic in India recede into the rear-view mirror, the threat of new variants, including Omicron, continues to hang over India’s economic trajectory. The question is to what degree India’s employment situation has been scarred by the pandemic so far, and whether it is robust enough to endure another such wave. The recent data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), as discussed in this newspaper by Mahesh Vyas, has some disquieting implications. The data suggests that, while new jobs have indeed been created in recent weeks, the