Weekly Numerics | Never-ending wait for US Green Card applicants, rise of Pune real estate, and more

A weekly series from Moneycontrol

Weekly Numerics is a column where we will present three to five charts based on compelling data points that came out during the week. Here are some of the figures that we found interesting from the week gone by.

Excruciatingly long wait

Of more than 1.1 million Indians who have applied for a US Green Card, more than 400,000 could die waiting for theirs to be processed, according to a recent analysis of US Citizenship and Immigration Services data by David J. Bier, associate director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute.

Indians account for 62.8 percent of the more than 1.8 million Green Card applications in the backlog.

The stipulation that no country may receive more than 7 percent of the Green Cards issued unless they would otherwise go unused is one of the major factors for the huge delay faced by Indian applicants.

As it stands, the backlog for new applicants from India for EB-2 and EB-3 visas stands at a whopping 134 years, according to the analysis.

Jal Jeevan Mission reaches 130 million households

The Jal Jeevan Mission now provides tap water to more than 130 million households, according to the latest government data. The scheme, which was started in 2019 to provide tap water to rural households, achieved this milestone in four years, with several states reporting 100 percent tap water coverage.

Ahead of the 2024 elections, though, the pace seems to have picked up, with more than 87,000 new tap water connections provided per day so far this year—closer to the 2021-21 figure of more than 88,500 connections a day.

Pune is the favoured real estate destination

As property in cities such as Mumbai and New Delhi becomes increasingly unaffordable for the general public, less expensive metro cities are reaping the rewards.

Pune has become India’s most affordable and preferred real estate destination among metro cities, according to a report by CRE Matrix and CREDAI Pune Metro.

At Rs 62.9 lakh, the average home value in Pune was the lowest among the cities analysed. In Mumbai, the figure was about Rs 1.99 crore.

In-demand skills

Demand for courses on Google Cloud and ChatGPT surged more than 500 percent among Indian employees on a quarterly basis, becoming the most sought-after topics for learning and upskilling, according to the Workplace Learning Index report by Udemy Business for Q2 of 2023.