NSSO survey says unemployment fell across major towns, cities

An official survey has revealed that the unemployment rate during the five year period ending 2009-10 has fallen from 3.8 percent to 2.8 percent across cities and towns.

The findings have been released by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), based on the eighth quinquennial survey on employment and unemployment conducted in the 66th round of NSS during July 2009 to June 2010.

Even as most cities and towns did well, unemployment rate rose sharply in Agra, Ludhiana and Meerut, the study showed.

The unemployment rate in Agra rose to 5.5 percent in 2009-10 from 0.2 percent in 2004-05, while in Ludhiana it increased to 6.3 percent from 1.2 percent over the same period. In Meerut, unemployment surged to 3.9 percent from 2.1 percent in the same period.

The maximum unemployment percentage was witnessed in Patna and Kanpur at 13.2 percent and 7.7 percent respectively in 2009-10. The lowest rate of unemployment was recorded in Bhopal at 0.1 percent followed by Surat at 0.6 percent and Indore at 0.8 percent in 2009-10.

The NSSO survey covered over 7,402 villages and 5,252 urban blocks spread over 1,00,957 households (59,129 in rural areas and 41,828 in urban areas) and enumerating 4,59,784 persons (2,81,327 in rural areas and 1,78,457 in urban areas).

The proportion of employed men in 2009-10 was 73 percent for class-1 cities and 74 percent for class-2 towns and about 76 percent for class-3 towns. These proportion for women were - 17 percent for class-1 cities, 18 percent for class-2 towns and nearly 21 percent for class-3 towns.

PTI