It's not good news for the poll-bound UPA government that had been hoping to hard sell its high growth record by commissioning a special unemployment survey in 2011-12, after the regular five-yearly survey carried out in 2009-10 showed adramatic dip in job creation.

India's employment rate has slipped to 38.6% in 2011-12, from 39.2% in 2009-10, as per latest data from the central statistical office. In 2004-05, when the UPA took charge for the first time, the employment rate was 42%.

The number of unemployed rose to 10.8 million in January 2012, from 9.8 million in January 2010. Official data released in 2011 had showed that just 2.7 million new jobs were created in the five years between 2004-05 and 2009-10 — sharply lower than the 60 million jobs created in the previous five years. Read More

Jyothi Shankaran

    Jyothi’s last role was as Senior Editor with the business news channel Bloomberg TV India. He also worked as News Editor at business-standard.com, the online version of the business newspaper Business Standard. Jyothi is a chemical engineer from the Regional Engineering College, Srinagar.