Grim numbers! India’s youth unemployment rate for 2020 to be at 32.5%

New Delhi: Predicting a grim picture of Indias employment scenario, a report jointly prepared by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and International Labour Organization (ILO) has estimated that the youth unemployment rate of the country is likely to be at 32.5 per cent in case the spread of coronavirus is contained within six months of the start of the rigorous containment measures.

Further, the report titled “Tackling the COVID-19 Youth Employment Crisis in Asia and the Pacific” said that the youth unemployment rate would have stood at 29.5 per cent in case containment was achieved in three months. The rate in 2019 stood at 23.3 per cent.

As per the report, over 61.13 lakh Indian youth are expected to lose their jobs during the year in case the spread is contained within six months, while the total job loss of youth in the country would have stood at 40.84 lakh if it would have been controlled in three months’ time.

“In the six-month scenario, job losses for youth may equal 6.1 million in India, followed by Pakistan with 2.3 million,” it said.

Interestingly, the survey found that the youth are expected to lose employment at a faster rate than adults.

“The fall in youth employment will be affected by the last-in-first-out process, in which young workers (hired more recently and with less job protection) are likely to lose work at a faster rate than adults,” it said.

Noting that aggregate job losses will concentrate in seven sectors and the worst-hit sectors of retail trade, textile manufacturing, and hotels and restaurants, will naturally experience large aggregate job losses, it said.