400,000 Applicants For Sweeper Jobs Reveal India’s Massive Unemployment
Surging job applicants puncture Modi government's claim that unemployment is falling sharply
(Photo: unemployed in line at a job application site in India. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.)
September 14, 2024
Official statistics claim that lots of jobs are being created in India and so unemployment is under control. For instance, according to data put out by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, from fiscal year 2017-18 to FY 2022-2023, the unemployment rate in the country fell by half to 3.2%. The report also says that, over the same period, there were substantial increases in the percentage of the population in the workforce – reaching 56% in fiscal year 2022-2023 - as well as in the labor participation rate, which rose to 58%.
However, fairly regularly there are news reports which reveal that the official jobs data may be fictional. Last month, for instance, Indian media reported that roughly 400,000 had applied for jobs as sweepers in Haryana state government offices and facilities.
Among the applicants are more than 6,000 with postgraduate degrees, an additional 40,000 with college degrees and more than 117,000 with high school education. The number of openings of the low-level unskilled job were not disclosed. The jobs are temporary contract work, with no benefits, paying Rs.15,000 ($200) a month in salary.
Recently, in another indication of rising unemployment in India, roughly 2.5 million applied for 6,000 clerical jobs also in Haryana.
Overall, as of June this year, more than 9% of India’s labor force are unemployed, three times the official figure, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, a private research firm based in Mumbai. Employment rate, which is the proportion of employed persons in the working age population, is around 38 per cent, according to CMIE, 20% lower than the government figure.
It is likely that even the CMIE data does not accurately reflect the massive unemployment issue in India. Employment in India is predominantly self-employment and casual employment. About four fifths of India’s workforce operates in the unregulated or informal economy and nearly 90 per cent is informally employed, according to a 2024 International Labor Organization (ILO) report on employment in India. Millions of the semi-employed work in part time jobs, including as cooks and sweepers in middle-and upper-class homes.
“Official figures of unemployment don’t capture the absence of jobs in the informal sector, and since most of India’s workforce is in the informal sector, especially rural, you’re not going to be recording them as unemployed,” said Bina Agarwal, a professor of development economics and environment at the University of Manchester told International Banker.
Overall, including unemployment in the informal sector and hidden unemployment, more than 200 million are likely unemployed in India – roughly the entire population of Brazil. The unemployment rate among college graduates in India is 29%, nine times greater than among those who cannot read or write, according to the ILO report.
The rising unemployment, as a Reuters report noted, underlines “the challenge Prime Minister Narendra Modi faces in providing millions of jobs.” It also has explosive political implications. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party failed to win a majority in this year’s national parliamentary elections in part due to rising unemployment.
The job of sweeper has traditionally been done by low-castes and that too those with little or no education. But several applicants for the jobs of sweepers in Haryana are from highly educated upper caste families. Among them are Manish Kumar, who holds a postgraduate diploma in business studies, and his wife Roopa, who completed a teachers’ training program.
Kumar told the Times of India, “Even in private schools or companies, we barely get Rs 10,000 a month (in salary). Here, there’s a glimmer of hope for regular employment…”