India is still 3 mn jobs short compared to pre-pandemic time: Mahesh Vyas, CMIE

New Delhi-The COVID-19 pandemic has unleashed economic devastation across India and the world and that in turn has rendered lakhs of people jobless. In addition to that the pandemic has made it difficult to find a job and pushed up the unemployment rate in India as well. In December, India's unemployment rate reached a four-month high at 7.91 per cent as compared to 7 per cent and 7.75 per cent in November and October 2021, data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) showed on Monday. Mahesh Vyas, Managing Director and CEO of Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, in an exclusive conversation with Business Today, said that the new variant Omicron has made a difficult situation a lot more difficult and that India is still 3 million jobs short compared to pre-pandemic time.

"The economy did recover from the first wave and it did recover from the second wave as well but the recovery was not complete. An important indicator of this is that the labor force participation rate which is about two percentage points lower than what it was before the pandemic hit us somewhere around the March 2020. Secondly, in the fiscal year 2019-20, the total employment in India was of the order of 409 million but in December 2021, it was 406 million. So, we are still 3 million jobs short compared to what we were in pre-pandemic time," Vyas added.

Throwing light on the 4-month high unemployment rate of 7.9 per cent in December, Vyas said that employment increased in December but that was inadequate.

"The important thing is that employment did increase in December. So, we had an increase in employment and an increase in the unemployment rate at the same time. So we have seen an increase in employment in December but that was inadequate. We required 8.5 million jobs; we could provide only 4 million jobs in December," Vyas argued.

According to Vyas, the new COVID-19 variant Omicron will not act as a spoiler to the growth plan of any organisation. "I don't think that because of Omicron anyone is going to stall their hiring. I don't think anyone perceives Omicron to be spoiler to their growth plans. If companies have good plans, any company that is to expand capacity, expand business, open new offices. I don't think they want to hold back."   Vyas, suggesting the way forward for boosting job creation in India, said that the government should ensure that the upcoming Budget pulls consumption spending, consumer spending, which, according to him, will go a long way in spurring investments, which will create good quality jobs.