Number of job seekers in India will cross 17.6m next year: International Labour Organisation

India needs to increase women’s participation in labour markets, build on its experience of its flagship employment scheme and provide social housing for the working poor to tackle unemployment, the ILO said on Wednesday as it warned of a grim global unemployment situation. 

“Decreased labour force participation of women in India is a big problem. It is very important to promote their participation, their involvement in the Indian economy,” the chief of International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) research division Raymond Torres said ahead of their new global unemployment report release on Wednesday. 

“And the second is to continue to build on the experience of Rural Employment Guarantee (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme or MGNREGS). There has been some debate in India recently but it would be a mistake to withdraw this, I think, because it is a very important social programme. “And the third is to emphasise more social housing, especially, for the working poor. These three factors have to be borne in mind,” he said. 

In a beginning-of-the-year report on global employment trends in 2015 that also projected trends for 2016, the ILO said unemployment the world over rose last year and downturns in key emerging economies presented a grim outlook, with the situation expected to worsen further over the next two years. 

India’s unemployment rate remained at 3.5 per cent in 2014 and 2015 but will decrease slightly to 3.4 per cent in 2016 and 2017, according to the ILO findings. However, the number of people seeking jobs will increase to 17.6 million people in 2017 from 17.5 million people in both 2015 and 2016. 

The global unemployment figure for 2015 stands at a staggering 197.1 million — an addition of 27 million people than the pre-crisis level of 2007 - and is forecast to increase further by about 2.3 million in 2016 to reach a total of 199.4 million unemployed people in the world. It will go up again by 1.1 million people in 2017. The increase in the number of job seekers in 2015 came mainly from the emerging and developing economies. 

The unemployment level in developed countries has fallen slightly from 7.1 per cent in 2014 to 6.7 per cent in 2015 while the employment outlook has weakened in emerging and developing economies, notably in Brazil, China and other oil-producing economies. “One set of figures, such as global unemployment, (however) does not tell the whole story of the state of employment in the world,” Ryder added. The report also sheds light on vulnerable employment, the working poor and informal work.