 You're watching News Made Easy, I'm Anindio Chakravarty. Indians have stopped looking for work. Is that because they've given up the hope of getting good jobs? Or is it because some of them have become so affluent that they don't need to work at all? But first, the data. This data is from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, CMIE, which is the largest and most respected private collector of employment data. They collect it every week and they publish it regularly for people to look at. And the latest data that we have from CMIE and it's a comparison between what has happened in 2016-17 to 2021-22, five years. What's happened? India's working age population, which is, of course, those who are above 15 years of age, that has gone up by 121 million, because population is increasing in five years. That is what has happened. In the same period, however, those who want to work, those who are actively looking for work or who will work if they get work, which CMIE calls the Greater Labour Force, has dropped by 22 million. So the population has increased of working age, population has increased, but those looking for work has dropped sharply. Now, in terms of percentage, in 2016-17, it was a shade below for 50%. So a shade below half of those who were in the working age looked for work, which is a bad number, by the way, for a developing country, where the number should be closer to 60-70%. But less than half were looking for work at that time. What has happened in the last fiscal, 2021-22? That Labour Force participation rate has dropped to just 42%. Now, as I said, you could argue that this is because more younger people, especially young adults between the age of 15-19, they've stopped looking for work because they're studying. They're going to school or registering for college courses. And therefore, they don't need work anymore. They're not looking for work. So obviously, that number will drop. And also, another thing that might have happened is that because more people are becoming affluent in a country like India, where there are a lot of traditional families, women have stopped going out to work to earn money. So they have to do all the work at home, but they're not going out to work to earn money. And that is why their numbers might have fallen as well. And on the face of it, that is actually correct. Let me start with the data for young adults between the 15-19 age group. And in 2016-17, about one in four out of them were looking for work, which is not a significant number. But you have to remember that these are young people. Most of them go to school or college. So only 24% of them were looking for work or wanted to work. Now, in 2021-22, that number has dropped sharply to just 8%. Again, on the face of it, there's nothing wrong with that. That's actually great news because that means that more of them are probably going to school or college. But what happens when you cross the 20-year threshold? The 20-year threshold is the 20-24 age group. There also, the workforce participation rate has dropped. Again, you could say that they are waiting for better jobs and maybe they're into higher studies now. And maybe that's the reason they're not working. Again, as I said, let's look at the data. The labour force participation rate amongst those over 20-24 years used to be about 49% in 2016-17, which means a shade below half of them wanted to work. Now, only 38% of them want to work, which is in 2021-22. Again, as I said, that one could say that this is actually a good thing. But what about those between the age of 25-39, which is essentially the period when one actually works very hard to develop one's career? More people amongst them should be looking for work. Let's look at the data there. What is happening there? Well, even there, the labour force participation rate has dropped from 58% to 56%. What about those between the 40-64 range? The peak of their career when they move from middle-rung to senior-rung. 64 years of age, the last age before retirement. What has happened there? Even there, the workforce participation rate has actually fallen. It was 55% in 2016-17. It has dropped to just 51% in 2021-22. But ultimately, workforce participation is one thing. The real test is how many people get jobs. If you look for jobs, are you getting jobs? Now, if fewer younger people are looking for jobs, obviously the unemployment rate should drop, right? Because who doesn't want to hire a young person? Who wouldn't want to hire someone between the age of 20-24 who have a lot of enthusiasm, are willing to work long hours, work hard and probably you can pay them less, right? So given that their labour force participation rate has dropped, as I said, by 11 percentage point, there should be a higher demand for people like that. Their unemployment rate should drop sharply. But here is the unemployment rate picture for them. In 2016-17, 32% of them were unemployed. Those who were looking for work. That's a massive rate, right? One out of three who was looking for work couldn't get a job. But what happened in 2021-22 when the labour force participation rate of these people has reduced, their availability reduced? Their unemployment rate has risen to 48%. Half of them who look for work do not get jobs in this young age of 20-24. And you can't blame it on COVID for 21-22. Because most of that period was without restrictions. There were some in the beginning, but if you look at it, jobs have actually continued to drop throughout this period. So this drop in jobs is a result of lower employment opportunities. It is the lower employment opportunities, the very high unemployment which is forcing young people to leave the labour force and get out of it and not even look for work. Now take the case of women. Now, as I said that this has been going on for a long time because in India women's labour force participation rate has always been pretty dismal, right? And this has been, we've been told repeatedly even in the UPA period that because people are getting affluent, women are withdrawing from the workforce, alright? And we can see that that's happening. Affluence or not, the workforce, people from the active labour force participation rate, women used to be about 19% in 2016-17. 19% of women wanted work or were looking for work. In 2021-22, that has dropped sharply to just 11%. Only 11% of women, about 1 in 10, is looking for work and the situation is worse in urban areas where about 18.5% of women were looking for work and 5 years ago in 2021-22, that has dropped to less than 10%, just 9%. In fact, lower than 9% from CMI's calculation. So you can see that women are withdrawing from the active workforce from which they will be paid. Maybe because they have to do more work at home and they can't afford to go out anymore. But as I said, there are a lot of places where women are required, jobs for which women are required and often they are paid less. One would imagine that, again, just as young people, the fact that only less than 10% of women or just about 10% of women actually look for work in urban areas, less than 10%, they should find it very easy to get jobs. But let's look at the unemployment figure here and how much more it is than men. Men's unemployment overall right is right now is about 9%. This is both urban and rural, this is in 2021-22. But that amongst women is 27%. Three times that of men, 27%. If you take urban areas, the unemployment rate amongst men is 12%. Amongst women, it is 36%. Again, three times, it is clear that women are not looking for work because they don't get work. Men can leave the village, come and work at a construction site. They can be itinerant workers. They might have to travel for two hours every day to go to work and come back, live far away from the city, work in the city and come back. Women can't do that. That is the key reason they're falling off the chart. Maybe earlier they were hiring someone, also generally women, to look after the house. Now they don't have enough family income to do that. They have to do it. It doesn't make economic sense for them to go out and earn money because the costs involved, both financial and family costs are much higher than what one would have to pay, what one would earn outside. So that is the reason women are falling out of the labour force. People are falling out of the labour force because there aren't any jobs for them. This is absolutely untrue that they're leaving the labour force, active labour force because they want to study or because they're affluent. They simply don't have jobs that is clear from their high unemployment rate. That's the show today. Keep watching NewsClick. Like this video. Share it as well.