Page 7 - Demo

| BIG STORY |
AUGUST 21, 2020 | The Indian Eye
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people has lost their jobs.
The data shows that India’s unemployment rate shot up to 23.5 % in July compared to 7 % in January. The rate of unem- ployed is the highest at 24.95 in the urban areas which include the majority of red zones creat- ed by the COVID 19 cases. The lockdown impact has been most severe on small, medium, and micro-enterprises like hotels and restaurants, multiplexes, re- tail, airlines, manufacturing, and media. This has led to job cuts as firms are scampering to deal with the emergency and the sit- uation is not set to improve any-
time soon.
New data from the Centre
for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), an independent body that measures and tracks eco- nomic indicators, has said that salaried jobs took a big hit during the COVID-19 lockdown, with the total loss estimated to be at
This is the first time that the government would provide help to the job- less at such scale
has been hurt. Firstly, accord- ing to corporate filings from 40 leading BSE 100 companies for the quarter ended June 2020, employee costs reduced sharply in the services sector and non-es- sential manufacturing.
Companies which saw the biggest year-on-year drop in ag- gregate employee expenditure at a consolidated level across the corresponding quarters are: Ma- hindra Finance (36.7%), Havells India (27%), Tata Motors (26%), HDFC Life Insurance (21%) and Maruti Suzuki India (15%). Close on their heels are InterGlobe Aviation (14.8%), Bajaj Finserv (13%) and United Spirits (12.9%).
As one crisis – the pandemic – hurts India, even a bigger crisis of joblessness is waiting to hurt the country even more. But the Modi government’s decision to provide help to the unemployed will come as a healing touch.
18.9 million during April 2020- July 2020.
The plight of salaried em- ployees has worsened since the lockdown, with a loss of 17.7 million salaried jobs in April, ad- ditional 0.1 million jobs in May, followed by a gain of 3.9 million jobs in June and then again, a loss
of 5 million jobs in July, it said. Anecdotally, media reports have been awash with painful stories of the salaried class – lay- offs across sectors, salary cuts
and delayed increments.
But beyond this, there have
been two strong data points on how badly formal employment
w w w. T h e I n d i a n E Y E . u s