According to official statistics issued on Monday, the urban unemployment rate fell to 12.2 percent in April-June 2021, down from 20.8 percent in the same period a year earlier.
The unemployment rate for women was 14.3 percent during the reporting period, down from 21.1 percent during the same time a year before. Similarly, 12.6 percent of men were unemployed.
Joblessness was high in April-June of 2020, owing mostly to the impact of the country’s lockdown restrictions established to combat the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
During the April-June 2021 period, the labour force participation rate (LFPR) was 46.8 percent, up from 45.9 percent in the previous year’s comparable period. The labour force participation rate (LFPR) is defined as the proportion of the population who works.
In April of this year, NSO released PLFS. Based on the PLFS, a quarterly bulletin is issued with estimates of labour force indicators such as UR, Worker Population Ratio (WPR), Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR), worker distribution by broad status in employment, and industry of work in Current Weekly Status (CWS).
The estimates of jobless people in CWS provide an average picture of unemployment during seven days of the survey period.
According to the CWS method, a person is deemed jobless if he or she did not work for at least one hour on any day of the week but sought or was available for employment for at least one hour on any day of the period. According to CWS, the labour force is the number of people who were either employed or unemployed on a weekly basis in the week preceding the survey date.
