400,000 Applicants For Sweeper Jobs Reveal India’s Massive Unemployment

(Photo: unemployed in line at a job application site in India. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.)

 September 14, 2024

Official statistics claim that lots of jobs are being created in India and so unemployment is under control.  For instance, according to data put out by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, from fiscal year 2017-18 to FY 2022-2023, the unemployment rate in the country fell by half to 3.2%. The report also says that, over the same period, there were substantial increases in the percentage of the population in the workforce – reaching 56% in fiscal year 2022-2023 - as well as in the labor participation rate, which rose to 58%.  

However, fairly regularly there are news reports which reveal that the official jobs data may be fictional. Last month, for instance, Indian media reported that roughly 400,000 had applied for jobs as sweepers in Haryana state government offices and facilities.

Among the applicants are more than 6,000 with postgraduate degrees, an additional 40,000 with college degrees and more than 117,000 with high school education. The number of openings of the low-level unskilled job were not disclosed. The jobs are temporary contract work, with no benefits, paying Rs.15,000 ($200) a month in salary.   

Recently, in another indication of rising unemployment in India, roughly 2.5 million applied for 6,000 clerical jobs also in Haryana.

Overall, as of June this year, more than 9% of India’s labor force are unemployed, three times the official figure, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, a private research firm based in Mumbai. Employment rate, which is the proportion of employed persons in the working age population, is around 38 per cent, according to CMIE, 20% less than the government figure.

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