Unemployment up, state starts listing jobs, workforce
Ruchika M Khanna
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, June 29
Two months of the Covid-induced lockdown have led to hundreds of thousands of people losing their job in the state. As Unlock 1.0 takes pace, the Punjab Government has started registering the unemployed and is struggling to get the workforce back on jobs.
Though the government admits that it was in no position yet to conduct a survey of the rate of unemployment, a data was sought from all District Bureaus of Employment Generation to assess which all sectors were hit the most by the lockdown.
Rahul Tiwari, Secretary, Employment Generation and Training, said, “The problem is the mismatch in the skill sets of those registering themselves and the skill sets required by the industry for the vacancies on offer. Thus, we are able to help only a small percentage of those who register themselves”.
According to the information gathered by the Department of Employment Generation and Training, of the total 65,934 labourers who have registered themselves between May 23 to June 15, the highest number of those seeking employment was in Mohali, followed by Pathankot, Amritsar, Fazilka and Nawanshahr. In Ludhiana, the state’s industrial capital, just 2,685 labour registrations have been reported against 2,400 vacancy registrations. In Jalandhar, the number of vacancies registered with the government (3,152), are more than the number of labourers who have registered themselves for seeking employment. However, only 14,602 labourers could be placed, with Hoshiarpur accounting for the highest placements at 1,652 persons.
The mismatch in skill sets is forcing several industrialists to hire private cabs and other small passenger vehicles to go to the Hindi heartland and get the required labour back.
The highest number of skilled and semi- skilled youth seeking jobs have registered in Mohali, followed by Ludhiana, Amritsar and Pathankot. A total of 55,914 such people have registered themselves against 31,037 vacancies registered by the department. The data collected by the department also shows that 637 youth have registered for high-end jobs, against 403 vacancies.
