Key Points
Indias labour market metrics deteriorated in March on the back of a significant drop in employment in construction and retail trade as millions of workers moved to agriculture for harvesting of rabi crops, the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy said...
According to CMIE data, while the unemployment rate climbed from 7.5% in February 2023 to 7.8% in March, the labour participation rate fell from 39.9% to 39.8% and the employment rate dropped from 36.9% to 36.7% in the same months...
This fall in the employment rate translated into a 2.6 million fall in absolute employment between December 2022 and March 2023, it said, adding that most of this fall, or 2.27 million, was in March 2023 largely due to shifting of seasonal demand...
It appears that these large declines in employment in construction and retail trade are not necessarily a fall in the demand for labour in these industries but a likely seasonal shift of labour to farmlands in preparation to harvest the rabi crop, CMIE said...
This massive movement of labour from one sector to another within short time intervals reflects the extraordinary mobility of labour in response to demand in India, it said, adding that the substantial volatility of employment in this large labour-intensive sector renders large parts of the Indian labour vulnerable.. (Catch all the Business News, Breaking News Events and Latest News Updates on The Economic Times.)..
