The most difficult work for a person is being out of work.Over the years, the world has witnessed increase in production due to mechanisation and modernisation. The standards of living are relatively better now, especially with the world becoming a small place to live. In fact, India is ready for fourth industrial revolution and technology innovations.The creation of wealth around the world has increased raising questions about distribution of wealth. This is the story on one side of the coin.
The other side is that the creation of wealth benefited only the rich especially in the past two decades. Not only in India, but also in countries like USA, China and Russia. In this past two decades, the unemployment increased around the world.The people in Australia and America are retaliating by killing the workforce coming from other countries. The locals are fearing that they are losing jobs to the immigrants. Even though the employment opportunities increased, due to lack of expertise a lot of people were not able to capture the employment prospect. The growth in number of unemployed people is more than the growth in job creation.
In India post the economic liberalisation in 1991 , the unemployment rate was expected to decrease. But the unemployment rate actually increased, even in the countries like Saudi Arabia and Japan where there was no unemployment problem.
According to the ILO’s World Employment and Social Outlook Trends 2017, WESO,the global unemployment rate is expected to rise from 5.7 to 5.8 per cent in 2017. The modest rise represents an increase of 3.4 million in the number of jobless people.
As per the economic survey,the unemployment rate was estimated to be 5.0 percent at the All India level under the UPS approach. In other words, 5.0 percent of the persons aged 15 years and above who were available for work could not get work during the reference period of 2015-16.
Gujarat has the lowest unemployment rate. Telangana stands 5th with 2.8 percent and Andhra Pradesh stands 7th with 3.9 percent in the unemployment rate. The highest unemployment rate is seen in Tripura, Sikkim and Kerala. The most literate state in the country Kerala has the third highest unemployment rate of 12.5 percent.
The unemployment rate in women is more than men. It is high in Urban areas compared to the rural areas.Also, if the employment pattern is observed, there is decrease in employment in agriculture sector while increase in service sector.
Two decades ago unemployment in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh was very high especially due to lack of educational facilities. The same thing was very good in developed countries. The third category of nations are the ones like Saudi who import cheap labour, instead of encouraging youth to pursue education. The students of developing countries like India started pursuing education abroad to enhance their skills.
Due to increase in oil prices, the revenue of the developed and the countries who import cheap labour, decreased to an extent that they are unable to pay their employees. So, these nations have to either remove the employees or regularise them. This also led to increase in local unemployment, thus mounting additional pressure on the government. Governments of various countries started framing rules giving preference to local employment. In the global village, the issue of unemployment needs to be addressed soon by all the nations, before it creates any further chaos.
