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Slowdown Dents the Quality of Employment
Increased dependence on agriculture and self-employment points to the growing deficit in decent work.
The annual report of the Periodic Labour Force Survey, 2021–22, which is the fifth in the series, highlights the recent trends in employment and unemployment at both the national level and in the states. A major gain noted in the report was the post-pandemic recovery in the labour markets with unemployment levels falling marginally, even while employment levels dipped for the first time in four years.
The report shows that the unemployment rate as measured by the usual status, which is a very liberal definition of the activity status over a reference period of 365 days, has fallen by 0.1 percentage point to 4.1% in 2021–22, the lowest in five years. While male unemployment fell to 4.4%, female unemployment was still lower at 3.3%. The trends show that the decline in female employment during this period was one-third faster than that of males.