NEW DELHI (Reuters) -India’s unemployment rate among individuals aged 15 years and above stood at 5.1% in April, the country’s ministry of statistics said in a statement on Thursday.
This is the first of what will be India’s monthly labour force data reports, which will cover both urban and rural areas. Previously, the government published quarterly and annual employment statistics for urban and rural areas respectively.
India’s labour statistics have been criticised in the past for long delays and an unrealistic picture of the unemployment in the country.
The official unemployment rate for April is lower than the 7.73% unemployment rate as measured by private forecaster Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), although the two data sets are not absolutely comparable.
The official data pegs urban unemployment at 6.5% and rural unemployment at 4.5%.
(Reporting by Manoj Kumar and Ira Dugal, Writing by Surbhi Misra; Editing by Savio D’Souza)
