India will likely have rural jobs statistics along with data on urban unemployment from September onwards, with a monthly unemployment reading available from January, sources told Moneycontrol.
The new arrangement is expected to capture the unemployment data from across India, instead of only focusing on urban pockets.
“We will be capturing rural unemployment and labour force participation numbers,” person aware of the developments said, adding that from January 2025 onwards, India should have a monthly estimate on unemployment too.
At present, unemployment data is released for urban regions only, and on quarterly basis, capturing joblessness, labour force participation and worker population ratio. This is likely to be turned into a monthly statistics from January onwards, Moneycontrol learns.
“The government is also deliberating on moving the timeline of rural jobs data at par with urban,” the source said.
The most recent employment data release was for the January-March quarter, released on May 15.
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India's female unemployment rate had declined to 8.5 percent during the last quarter of FY24, compared with 9.2 percent for the same period a year ago. Urban unemployment rate had fallen to 6.7 percent in Q4FY24, from 6.8 percent a year ago.
Moneycontrol was the first to report that the government is considering to reduce the period of jobs data releases for both urban as well as rural areas. Presently, the Centre releases numbers of industrial production, consumer price index as well as the wholesale price index on a monthly basis.
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