Unemployment rate declines marginally to 4.9% in 2024: Govt survey           

There was a slight uptick in the urban jobs for women but no such cheer for men in 2024, the latest set of government job data released on Wednesday has shown.

The Periodic Labour Force Survey – Key Employment Unemployment Indicators for 2024 released by the Ministry of Statistics -- reveals that in rural areas, there was a marginal decline in overall unemployment from 4.3% to 4.2% amid slight reductions for both men and women.

This was not the case in cities though because urban male unemployment rose from 6% to 6.1% but female unemployment declined from 8.9% to 8.2%.

Overall urban unemployment rate was stable at 6.7%. At an all India level, unemployment saw a minor drop -- 5% to 4.9%, suggesting slight improvements in employment opportunities.

The data further show a decline in unpaid helpers in household enterprises and notes, "this seems to have contributed to the drop in worker population ratio as well as labour force participation ratio among rural females, as the percentage of helpers in household enterprises decreased from 19.9% to 18.1% from 2023 to 2024," the Survey says.

So far as Labour Force Participation Rate goes, in urban areas, it increased for males (74.3% in 2023 to 75.6% in 2024) and slightly for females (25.5% to 25.8%), leading to an overall rise in LFPR (50.3% to 51%).

"Overall LFPR remained constant at 56.2%, despite minor variations across categories," the data show.

In the Worker Population Ratio (WPR), data indicate slight improvements across all categories, particularly in the overall WPR (47% to 47.6%) in urban areas.

At all India levels, however, WPR remained relatively unchanged (53.4% to 53.5%).

The Survey notes that the labour force participation rate (LFPR) in India remained largely stable between 2023 and 2024, though there were some variations across rural and urban areas.

At the national level, the overall LFPR remained nearly unchanged, with a marginal decline from 59.8% to 59.6%.

The Worker Population Ratio followed a similar pattern. At the all-India level, WPR recorded a marginal decline, moving from 58% to 57.7%, indicating a slight drop in employment despite stable participation rates.

The Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) was launched by the National Statistics Office in April 2017 with the view of making labour force data available at more frequent time intervals.