Young workers, aged below 30 years, were the ones to face the most job losses during the lockdown starting from April, with their share in total employed in the country declining to 18.8 percent during April-June 2020 from 20.9 percent, the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) said in its weekly data.
Young women have been particularly hit hard during the lockdown period as men to women ratio deteriorated to 9.1 during April-June 2020 from 8.4 during 2019-20, reported The Economic Times.
According to CMIE, this corroborates EPFO payroll data, which showed that the registration of people of 21 years or less fell dramatically to 22.2 percent during April and May compared to 27.1 percent in six months ended in February 2020.
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"Share of those between 22 and 28 years, which hovered around 38-39 percent of registrations in the pre-lockdown period, fell to 33.4 percent in April-May 2020," CMIE said, quoting the EPFO data.
Evidently, while the lockdown has hit employment in all age groups, it has hit the employment of youngsters who are less than 29 years of age much more than it has hit the relatively grown-up age groups, it said.
As on July 29, the overall unemployment rate over a 30-day moving average stood at 7.57 percent improving from 8.02 percent on July 25, with both urban and rural unemployment rate witnessing a marginal dip.
While urban unemployment stood at 9.79 percent on July 29, the rural unemployment rate stood at 6.56 percent.
Meanwhile, over 8 million Employee Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) subscribers have withdrawn as much as Rs 30,000 crore in less than four months starting from April. The amount withdrawn by EPFO subscribers exceeded the usual outgo recorded during the period. It can be attributed to COVID-related stress, including, layoffs, pay cuts and medical expenses.
The Ministry of Finance had in March said EPFO subscribers can withdraw up to 75 percent of the amount or three months of the wages, whichever is lower, from their EPF accounts.
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