The recently published Annual Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), 2017-18 reports the unemployment rate for all states and union territories. As the overall unemployment rate has significantly increased, same phenomenon is witnessed across all states and union territories. Certain states have unemployment rates below the national average , while certain other states have unemployment rates higher than the national average
IPD focuses into the pattern that emerge for 18 major states of India which in total account for 502 seats in Loksabha out of a total of 543 seats. The unemployment rates for male and female in rural and urban sector is looked into separately for each of these 18 states.
For rural males majority of the states ( 10 out of 18) has unemployment rates above the national average. But the pattern reverses for rural females and urban males where majority of the states has lower unemployment rates compared to the national average. For urban females equal number of states have unemployment rates higher / lower than the national average. Gujarat has the lowest unemployment rates for both urban male and female while Kerala has the highest unemployment rate for females in both urban and rural India among the major states.
Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Rajasthan and West Bengal has unemployment rates lower than the national average for all the four segments ( both male and female in rural and urban India). Telengana and Odhisa on the other hand has unemployment rate higher than the national average for all the four categories. Maharashtra, Chattisgarh, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh has unemployment rates lower than the national average for 3 of the four categories.
While the unemployment rate has witnessed a significant increase overall, there are differences in the pattern of unemployment rates for different segments. But one needs to acknowledge that unemployment rates are higher even when looked in absolute terms for each of the states.
Job creation and skill development is a joint responsibility of the central and the state governments. In India’s federal structure state plays a important role and the success of any policy measure is widely dependent on the cooperation between state governments and the central government. IPD sincerely hopes that all state governments and the central government works closely with each other and lead to a reduction in unemployment rates for each states and union territories. This only can lead to sustainable economic growth of the country.
Indian Political Debate 