New Delhi, January 7: Unemployment is rising in the country as nearly one crore people lost their jobs in 2018, according to a report by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE). The report also found that the number of unemployed persons has been steadily increasing in the country. Around 3.7 million salaried employees lost jobs in 2018, the report said.

The number of employed recorded in December 2018 was at 397 million, which is 10.9 million less than the figure of 407.9 million seen a year ago at the end of December 2017. "India's unemployment rate shot up to 7.4 per cent in December 2018. This is the highest unemployment rate we've seen in 15 months. The rate has increased sharply from the 6.6 per cent clocked in November," the report stated. Over 1 Crore Jobs Lost in India in 2018, Claims Congress Referring to Think-tank Report.

People in rural areas were worst affected due to the rising unemployment. "An estimated 9.1 million jobs were lost in rural India while the loss in urban India was 1.8 million jobs. Rural India accounts for two-thirds of India's population, but it accounted for 84 per cent of the job losses," the report stated. Women suffered more than men as they accounted for 8.8 million out of the 11 million jobs lost. Only 2.2 million men lost their job.

"The break-down of employment statistics by the various attributes of respondents discussed above tells us that a person who lost the job in 2018 mostly fits a profile like - is a woman, particularly a woman in rural India, is uneducated and is engaged as a wage labourer or a farm labourer or is a small-scale trader and is aged either less than 40 years or more than 60 years," the report said.

Citing the CMIE report, Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari alleged that the BJP-led NDA government failed to fulfil its promise of providing two crore jobs every year and the country lost one crore jobs instead.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jan 07, 2019 01:17 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).