-Newsclick.in Besides the dire jobs situation, what is even more distressing is falling income from surviving jobs. People in India are in the grip of a severe income crisis brought on by myopic government policies and aggravated by mismanagement of the pandemic. Part of this economic collapse is because the absolute number of jobs has shrunk. Another part – not much talked about – is because of low incomes from existing jobs. This...

-The Telegraph Trying to make labour force survey results look artificially attractive by the government may only be an attempt at self-deception  The latest Periodic Labour Force Survey data for July 2019 to June 2020 released by the Central government shows a rise in the labour force participation rate and a fall in the unemployment rate even when the economy registered a sharp deceleration in the rate of growth. This is surprising...

-The Hindu India needs a sharp revival of demand for which higher per capita incomes are necessary The provisional estimates of annual national income (2020-21), released on May 31 by the National Statistical Office, did not have any surprises, but for one, that is, there is nothing encouraging in the numbers. The agriculture sector continued its impressive growth performance, reiterating that it still remains as the vital sector of the economy, especially at...

-Livemint.com The lack of jobs is forcing many people to stop looking for one and thus drop out of the workforce. Here’s the good news first. According to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), the unemployment rate for June 2021 fell to 9.17%. It was at 11.9% in May. The following chart plots the unemployment rate since January 2016, the period for which this data is available. As can be seen from...

The recent Supreme Court of India’s judgments (please click here and here) related to ensuring food security of the migrant and unorganised sector workers through the provision of dry ration, running of community kitchens and proper implementation of the 'One Nation One Ration Card' scheme should come as no surprise to us. A recent review of some of the robust studies, which relied on multi-state surveys (or reference surveys), having...