Finally, jobless data in India!

Finally, we will be having some data on employment/unemployment numbers!

Private research company, CMIE is taking on this huge task – it will be providing a daily, weekly and monthly jobless rate for India. The sample size will be 158,000 households and the results will be made freely accessible in conjunction with BSE.

While we have always concentrated on only GDP and inflation data, it would be fantastic to lay our hands on real-time data, especially on the jobless rate. But the biggest challenge would be – how will this data assess 90% of the working force which is unregistered?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is considering a plan that would add staff at the statistics agency to produce a quarterly unemployment report but one does not when this will happen. CMIE plans to start releasing data from next month.

Data is good, especially in today’s turbulent times. Thus unemployment rates will give us an indication of whether or not the growth rate is moving in tandem with the ground reality.