UP bypasses Bihar in the labour workforce

LUCKNOW: According to key employment and unemployment indicators for the state, Uttar Pradesh registered an unemployment rate of 19 per 1000 persons between July 2009 and June 2010. This has been revealed in a data released by the Union ministry of statistics and programme implementation through its National Sample Survey Office. The data is based on information gathered during the 66th round of the national sample survey. The last such survey was held between July 2004 and June 2005.

In UP, 8,933 households and 49,524 persons were surveyed for key employment and unemployment indicators. Across the country, trends that have been arrived at are based on a central sample of 1,00,957 households in urban and rural areas. The survey has defined lead indicators of Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR), or the ratio of labour force to population, Workers Population Ratio (number of persons employed per 1000 persons), Proportion Unemployed and unemployment rate (ratio of unemployed to labour force.

The survey findings, which were released on Friday, reported that UP registered a LFPR of 296 during the survey period. This was higher than Bihar where labour force participation rate was 276 for every 1000 persons. Workers population in UP was pegged at 291 (Bihar was 268), while the proportion of unemployed in UP stood at 6 for every 1000 persons. Here also, UP pipped Bihar, which stood marginally lower at 7 for every 1000 persons. On the unemployment rate parameter too, UP appears to have bettered Bihar, recording a rate of 19 unemployed persons against Bihar’s 27 for every 1000 persons.

According to survey results, while Nagaland registered the highest number of proportion unemployed (per 1000) at 83, UP recorded among the lowest figures at 10. Only Karnataka (9), MP (8), Arunachal Pradesh (8), and Chhattisgarh and Sikkim at 8 each had lower unemployment levels in the 15-59 age group categories. Besides these indicators, the survey has revealed other important statistics relating to distribution of workers, on the basis of employment status, industry as well as on wage rates of persons receiving regular wages, salaries and casual labourers. On the whole, while the working population ratio (WPR) has been recorded at 37% at all India level, WPR in rural areas (37%) was found to be higher than urban areas, where it was recorded as 34%.

In rural as well as urban centres, WPR for men was found to be significantly higher than female WPR; 54% WPR for men, in comparison to a paltry 20% for rural women and 12% for women in urban areas.
Similarly, unemployment ratio (UR) at all India level was found to be nearly 3%. In comparison to the UR in the rural areas (2%), UR in urban areas was higher at 4%. Unemployment among women in urban areas was the highest at nearly 7%, followed by urban male at 3%. In rural areas, unemployment rate among both men and women was nearly the same at 2%