The unemployment rate may become the biggest headache after inflation for the UPA government, especially the urban jobless rate, survey data shows. The way out — stepping up employment growth in the private sector, absorbing the extra hands that are jobless due to a sharp dip in agricultural employment, pushing labour-intensive and export-oriented manufacturing industries and imparting skills to improve the employability of youth. Citing the latest findings of the National Sample Survey Organisation, the survey found that though employment increased faster between 1999-2000 and 2004-05 as compared to the period from 1993-94 to 1999-2000, the labour force expanded faster leading to greater unemployment. While employment grew annually by 2.48 per cent, the labour force “grew even faster at an annual 2.54 per cent” between 1999-2000 and 2004-05, the survey notes. “As a result, unemployment was higher at 3.06 per cent of the labour force in 2004-05 compared 2.78 per cent in 1999-2000,” it said. Despite the higher employment growth, the survey stressed on the need for faster growth to “not only absorb the addition” to the labour force, but also reduce the unemployment rate. Women seem to be losing out in the high growth performance listed in the Economic Survey. Data shows while the jobless rates for males have either remained stable or gone down, unemployment among women have gone up during the 1999-2000 to 2004-05 period. During this period, while the jobless rate for rural males remained stable at 2.1 per cent, the unemployment rate for rural female has more than doubled from 1.5 percent to 3.1 per cent. Similarly, while the unemployment rate for urban males have gone down from 4.8 per cent in 1999-2000 to 4.4 per cent, the unemployment rate for urban female has increased from 7.1 percent to 9.1 percent during this period, which is about double the rate for urban males. The economic survey acknowledges the gender imbalance in rising unemployment rate during this period and attributes it to an increase in “unemployment incidence for females”. Recognising gender as a cross cutting theme, the Economic Survey underlines the need to tackle the problems of poverty, region wise and community wise disparities by ensuring access to basic physical infrastructure as well as health and education for all by improving the social infrastructure in the country. On subsidies, the report indicates that development schemes run with the help of individual subsidies cannot be sustained over a long period. “The inconclusive debate on subsidies needs to be resumed, and tangible progress made for cost effective income transfers to the truly needy.”
