Nearly 12 million jobs added in January

CHENNAI: Around 12 million people were employed in January, the highest monthly addition since the lock-down. This saw the unemployment rate easing to 6.5 per cent during the month.

The number of employed people came down to 400.7 million last month compared to 388.8 million in December. The surge in employment in January also compensated for the loss in the past three months, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy.

"Month-over-month variations in employment rarely crossed the 5 million mark before the lockdown. The increase in January was twice this max variation,” said Mahesh Vyas, CEO of CMIE.

This helped the unemployment rate ease from 9.1 per cent in December to to 6.5 per cent in January. The unemployment rate was volatile in the past six months, ranging from a low of 6.5 per cent in November to a high of 9.1 per cent in December. The average unemployment rate during August- January was 7.4 per cent. "The two most recent months December and January have seen an unusual jump in this volatility. In December 2020, India added 11.3 million unemployed persons. In January, India saw the count of unemployed decline by 10.7 million.

These are extraordinary variations. Perhaps, the sharp rise in the unemployed in December was extraordinary and in January India has reverted to its normal count ofunemployed, which seems to average at about 28 million,” said Vyas. In January 2021, there were 27.9 million unemployed people who wereactively looking for work, while there were another 12.1 million who were also unemployed andwilling to work but not actively looking for work.

“A lot of pent up demand in the B2B industry has started getting released as the fear of the second wave of the pandemic receded. IT budgets in the western world which were earlier put on freeze have been re-allocated. More companies are now hiring technical skills and domain experts. Infra-structure companies are hiring at a rapid pace because of increased government spending in the sector.
Funded start-ups continue their hiring momentum. All these factors contributed to decline in the unemployment rate in January,” said Aditya Narayan Mishra, director and CEO of CIEL HR Services.