Unemployment rate (UR) in India dropped by 1.3% points in July from an eight-month high of over 9 per cent in the previous month.
Experts attribute the decline in the unemployment rate to the sowing season and the progress in hiring of workers.
According to the Consumer Pyramids Household Survey, the UR fell to 7.9 per cent in July from 9.2 per cent in June. The survey was conducted periodically by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), covers 1,78,000 sample households.
In absolute terms, the number of unemployed declined to 35.4 million in July from 41.4 million in the month before, according to an estimation made by the survey based on its sample.
The male unemployment rate decreased from 7.8 per cent in June to 7.1 per cent in July. For females, it dropped from 18.6 per cent to 13.2 per cent. Despite this larger decline among females, their unemployment rate remains higher than the national average.
Unlike in June, the UR stood higher at 8.5 per cent in urban areas in July against 7.5 per cent in the rural parts.
In June, the urban parts saw this rate at 8.8 per cent, while the rural areas had it at 9.3 per cent. As such, the decline in UR was higher in rural areas at 1.8 per cent points compared to 0.3 in urban areas over this period.
The numbers may indicate some mitigation in the rural distress but are unlikely to give relief to the government striving hard to engage the private sector to hire more people, amid elevated joblessness in urban areas which is the hub for formal jobs.
Naukri JobSpeak Index, which tracks new job listings and job-related searches from recruiters, saw an increase to 2,877 in July from 2,582 the month before.
Meanwhile, the labour participation rate (LPR), which shows the proportion of working-age people (above 15 years) willing to work, declined from 41.3 per cent in June to 41 per cent in July, according to CMIE. This indicated a rise in the number of people not actively seeking work.
The LPR for males declined to 67.7 per cent in July from 68% in the previous month, while it remained the same at 11.2 per cent for females.