COVID-19 Impact | 6 million white-collar workers lost jobs during May-August

White-collar employment for May-August 2020 was at 12.2 million, the worst since 2016, CMIE data shows. Industrial workers were the next hardest hit, losing 5 million jobs year on year.

Moneycontrol News

September 20, 2020 / 21:21 IST

The COVID-19 pandemic has wiped out all employment gains made in the white-collar space since 2016 in a span of four months, Mahesh Vyas, Managing Director and CEO, Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) said in a blog post.

White-collar employment for May-August 2020 was at 12.2 million, the lowest it has been since 2016, CMIE data shows. Year on year (YoY), job losses were at 6.6 million for white-collar workers while industrial workers were the next hardest hit, losing 5 million jobs.

“This (May-August 2020) is the lowest employment of these professionals since 2016. All the gains made in their employment over the past four years were washed away during the lockdown,” Vyas said.

Among the white-collar professionals, clerical employees were not hit but desk-workers such as secretaries, office clerks, BPO/KPO workers and data-entry operators saw opportunities diminish.

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

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