The reason behind dropped unemployment rate of India to 13.3%: Current Affairs Special Series

Team Adda247 and BankersAdda are here with a Current Affairs Special Series. In this series, candidates will be introduced to current affairs topics daily, which will not only improve their general awareness but also will ensure that the candidates do not lack in any current affairs topic. Today’s Current Affairs topic is The reason behind dropped unemployment rate of India to 13.3%.

The reason behind dropped unemployment rate of India to 13.3%

What is the unemployment rate?

The rate which indicates the percentage of the labour force which is jobless is called the ‘unemployment rate’.     In other words; the unemployment rate is the proportion of the labour force that is not employed currently but it could be.

The unemployment rate in India cooled down to 13.3% in the second quarter of 2020-21. It had recorded an all-time high of 20.9% in the first quarter amid the nationwide lockdown to contain the spread of the pandemic. 

As per the periodic labour force survey (PLFS) which is published by the National Statistical Office (NSO), the unemployment rate had stood at 8.4% in the corresponding quarter a year-ago period. Joblessness or unemployment rate is defined as the percentage of unemployed people in the labour force. Labour force denotes to the part of the population which provides or offers to provide labour for pursuing economic activities for the production of goods and services. The worker population ratio was stood at 32.1% in the second quarter of the last fiscal which was down from (33.7%) the same period of a year ago.

NSO had launched PLFS in April 2017 for publishing a quarterly bulletin that gives an estimation of labour force indicators namely UR, Worker Population Ratio (WPR), Labour Force participation rate (LFPR) and distribution of workers in employment and industry of work in ‘Current Weekly Status (CWS). The estimation of unemployed individuals in CWS shows an average image of unemployment in a short period of 7 days during the survey period. 

As per the CWS rules any individual or a person can be considered as ‘unemployed’ if he or she has not to work even for one hour on any day during the week and he or she sought to was available for work at least 1 hour on any day of the week.