India’s unemployment rate has registered a slight increase since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government began its term in May 2014, despite the government’s professed emphasis on job creation, according to an analysis of government data.
The unemployment rate in 2015-16 was 5% of the labor force, up from 4.9% in 2013-14, the year before the BJP assumed power.
As the BJP government completes three years in office this week, IndiaSpend is analyzing five of its key electoral promises–on employment, Swachh Bharat, roads, access to electricity and terrorism. In the first part today, we look at how the government has performed on job creation.
“The country has been dragged through 10 years of Jobless Growth by the Congress-led UPA Government,” the BJP had said in its manifesto for the 2014 general election, “Under the broader economic revival, BJP will accord high priority to job creation and opportunities for entrepreneurship.”
At a rally in Agra in 2013, Narendra Modi, then campaigning for the position of Prime Minister, had said the BJP would create 10 million jobs: “If BJP comes to power, it will provide one crore jobs which the UPA (United Progressive Alliance) government could not do despite announcing it before the last Lok Sabha polls,” the newspaper DNA had quoted Modi in a November 2013 story.
Yet, the 2016-17 Economic Survey, based on data from the labor ministry, stated: “Employment growth has been sluggish.”
Based on the ‘Usual Principal Status’–according to which those who have spent a major part (183 days or more) of the preceding 365 days before a survey on economic activity are counted as having been part of the labour force–the labour ministry’s report on the Fifth Annual Employment-Unemployment Survey (2015-16) said unemployment was 5%.
The figure for 2013-14 was marginally lower, at 4.9%, according to labor ministry data.
The survey includes workers in both formal and informal parts of the economy, as well as those working as casual workers in public works programs.