UNEMPLOYMENT: The Real Crises.

“Dying in the line of duty is heroic, but dying while unemployed is just stupid.” ― Tsugumi Ohba

UNEMPLOYMENT is the real issue of any country. The countries employment rate defines its economic condition and Unemployment is often used as a measure of the health of the economy. Unemployment, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is persons above a specified age (usually above 15) not being in paid employment or self employment but currently available for work during the reference period.

IMPACT ON JOBS DUE TO COVID-19

The Corona virus Pandemic has not just created a medical emergency but also an employment crisis across the world. The top Industries which are affected due to Covid-19 are

1. TECH – The effects of COVID-19 are having a significant impact on the technology sector, affecting raw materials supply, disrupting the electronics value chain, and causing an inflationary risk on products. More positively, the disruption has caused an acceleration of remote working, and a rapid focus on evaluating and de-risking the end-to-end value chain. In addition, potential carbon emission reductions could result in renewed focus on sustainability practices. 

2. Aviation– As most of the Countries has banned Domestic as well International Flights which has directly affected Aviation sector.

3. Travel & Tourism– Travel & Tourism is one the most affected sector during this pandemic.As the are people are avoiding travel to different countries and cities.

4. Retail – As shops dealing with non-essential items has been temporally banned, Therefore it has affected many people and resulted to job loss across the world.

5. Entertainment– The entertainment industry is adversely affected by the coronavirus outbreak. However, as more people stay at home, in self-isolation, and take quarantine measures, there is increased use of alternate entertainment services such as games, video-on-demand, etc.

According to CMIE Unemployment rate in India is 27.11% for the week ended on May 3. up from the under 7% level before the start of the pandemic in mid-March, the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE). As per the reports unemployment was the highest in the urban areas, which constitute the most number of the red zones due to the corona virus  cases, at 29.22%, as against 26.69% for the rural areas. As per the of report due to the nationwide lockdown around 27 million youth in the age group of 20- 30 years has lost jobs in the month of April. Unemployment rate had moderated to 21.05 per cent in the previous week (which ended April 26) from 26.19 per cent in the week before.

This pandemic has also affected the migrant workers around the country which has resulted EXODUS of thousands of workers to their hometowns around the country. According to the report the population of migrant labour is around 8 crore. Central government and State as well as various NGO’s has come forward to help them by providing them Food . Central government has also decided to invested in Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in order to provide employment. Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Sunday the government will now allocate an additional Rs 40,000 crore to MGNREGA to provide employment boost.

Unemployment rate in state level– Puducherry has the highest level of unemployment rate which is 75.8% as Puducherry’s main source of Income is Travel & Tourism and this sector is badly affected due to the Pandemic. Then we have Tamil Nadu having 49% unemployment rate Jharkhand 47.1 per cent and Bihar 46.6 per cent. But few states like Himachal Pradesh and Sikkim had very low rate of unemployment rate which was 2.2 and 2.3 respectfully.

The government has so far announced income and food support to the vulnerable people as part of a Rs 1.70 lakh crore fiscal stimulus to the economic, financial and possibly humanitarian crisis, and is also mulling a second round of measures soon.

At the Global level- UN’s work agency warns that Hundreds of millions of people could be left without work due to the impact of COVID-19. 30 million people in US and 1.76 million people are unemployed. the UN’s International Labour Organization predicts 1.6 billion informal economy workers could suffer “massive damage” to their livelihoods. In the second quarter of 2020, COVID-19 may cost the equivalent of 305 million full-time jobs. In the month of April 3.8 million people of America made an unemployment claim. Around 1.05 million South Koreans lost their jobs due to staff downsizing by their employers or company financial troubles. Which is largest since in 2000.

1.6 billion is the number of people on the margins of the world economy, from migrant workers to those employed in the gig economy, who are in immediate danger of losing their livelihoods. They make up half the world’s workforce and it is far from certain that their jobs will reappear even when the crisis is over.

#corona #covid19 #unemloyment