Mahesh Vyas, MD & CEO of Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), on Tuesday, said unemployment is currently evenly spread in rural and urban regions.

As India battles, a fierce second wave of COVID-19, states across the country have announced lockdown like restrictions. As a result, the unemployment rate moved into double digits in the week that ended on May 23.

The only time prior to this the double-digit unemployment rate was during April-May 2020 when the country was in a complete lockdown.

Speaking in an interview with CNBC-TV18, Vyas said, “The unemployment rate is high with further fall in labour participation rate and also this time it is equally spread across rural and urban regions. So even in rural India, there is the unemployment of 14.5 percent.”

“The problem is when you see labour participation rate falling, which means fewer people are willing to come and work and even for those less number of people coming to the labour markets, we will see they will not find jobs. Therefore, I fear and this is a calculation we have done is that there will be a big job loss in the month of May,” he said.

For the entire interview, watch the video

(Edited by : Bivekananda Biswas)