Women unemployment rate at 16-month low in January

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The first month of this year has brought happy tidings for women employment with the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) signalling a sharp drop of unemployment rate among them to 11% from 14.9% in December, the Business Standard has reported.

The unemployment rate is one of the most sensitive economic metrics in the poll season. It measures the number of people who don’t have a job and are scouring for one.

Women are supposed to be one of the key constituents that the ruling party at the Centre wants to address and the fall in unemployment ratio just before the polls might have political significance for it.

The rate of unemployment is the lowest in the past 16 months. In the same month last year – January 2023 – it stood at 13.5%.

World Bank data show that while 23.5% of the country’s workforce comprised women in 2022, the share in 2014 stood at 23.4%.

The labour participation rate is the share of the labour force in the total working-age population who are of 15 years of age and older.

The fall in unemployment in January comes against the backdrop of a decline in the labour participation rate has declined. This, according to the report, indicates a situation where a smaller share of women participating in the labour force are unemployed. However, the share of women in working age as a part of the labour force has declined.

Though the decline in women’s unemployment rate must be a positive development, any fall of women in the labour participation rate could trigger concern as the government is endeavouring to push up the share of women in the nation’s workforce.

The labour participation rate for women dropped from 12.1% in December 2023 to 10.3% in January 2024, CMIE has revealed.

The share of women stood at 10.5% in the villages, compared to 9.9% in urban India. But the fall was sharper in rural areas, where the female labour participation rate was at 13.3% in December.

The urban female labour participation rate improved marginally from 9.8% in December to 9.9% in January 2024.

For males, it came down to 67.6% in January 2024 from 67.9% in December 2023.

In her Interim Budget speech on February 1, Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that women’s participation in the workforce has increased. She based her statement on long-term government data, though the report states a divergence is visible in the private data of CMIE.

But on the subject of women share in total labour force India has the lowest share in the G20 nations with the sole except of Saudi Arabia.

However, comparative data on women employment in India presents an uphill task for the nation’s policymakers. World Bank data states that while 23.4% of the workforce of India comprised females, it rose to 23.5% in 2022. The comparative figures for France were 48.8% (2014) and 48.1% (2022), for Russia 48.6% (2014) and 48.5% (2021), for the US 46.4% (2014) and 46.1% (2022), for China 45.2% (2014) and 44.6% (2022), for Brazil 43.6% (2014) and 42.2% (2022) and for South Africa 46.5% (2014) and 46.4% (2022).