Hyderabad: India’s unemployment rate witnessed a sharp decline to 6.57 percent, the lowest since March 2021, with Telangana recording the lowest figures among other states at 0.7 percent, in January 2022.
While the unemployment in urban India stood at 8.16 percent, rural areas recorded the lowest figures at 5.84 percent, in January, as per data by the independent think-tank Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE).
In December, the unemployment rate stood at 7.91 percent, with urban at 9.30 percent and rural at 7.28 percent, it added.
In the month of January, Telangana reported the lowest unemployment rate at 0.7 percent, followed by Gujarat (1.2 percent), Meghalaya (1.5 percent), and Odisha (1.8 percent).
Haryana recorded the highest unemployment rate at 23.4 percent, followed by Rajasthan at 18.9 percent.
The number of unemployed people in India was estimated at 53 million, in December 2021, with a large proportion of women, as per the CMIE data.
CMIE MD and CEO Mahesh Vyas, in his analysis for December, had said that of the 35 million people who were actively looking for work in December 2021, 23 percent or 8 million were women.
“An equally important challenge is to provide employment to the additional 17 million who were also not employed and were willing to work if work was available, although they were not actively looking for employment,” Vyas added.