India is still not out of the woods as far as unemployment is concerned after a year when the lockdown was imposed to contain the spread of deadly COVID-19 on March 25 last year as pandemic-induced job loss has not tapered off consistently.

The government had imposed a lockdown to curb the spread of the pandemic but this impacted economic and commercial activities and resulted in job loss and later on the exodus of migrant workers which rocked the entire nation. According to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) data, the unemployment rate was recorded at 6.9 percent in February 2021 which is slightly better than 7.8 percent in the same month last year and 8.8 percent in March 2020, during which lockdown was imposed.

The data showed that the unemployment rate had peaked to 23.5 percent in April and remained at 21.7 percent in May. It started tapering off from June onward when it was recorded at 10.2 percent in the month and further improved to 7.4 percent in July. However, the unemployment rate again rose slightly to 8.3 percent in August and improved to 6.7 percent in September last year, as per CMIE data.

In October, unemployment again rose slightly to 7 percent and then eased to 6.5 percent in November last year as per the data. The CMIE data showed that the unemployment rate had risen to 9.1 percent in December 2020 and improved in January to 6.5 percent.

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