India in Crisis: Unemployment and Hunger Persist After Waves of COVID

[Riaz Haq]

India lost 6.8 million salaried jobs and 3.5 million entrepreneurs in November alone. Many among the unemployed can no longer afford to buy food, causing a significant spike in hunger. The country's economy is finding it hard to recover from COVID waves and lockdowns, according to data from multiple sources. At the same time, the Indian government has reported an 8.4% jump in economic growth in the July-to-September period compared with a contraction of 7.4% for the same period a year earlier.  This raises the following questions: Has India had jobless growth? Or its GDP figures are fudged? If the Indian economy fails to deliver for the common man, will Prime Minister Narendra Modi step up his anti-Pakistan and anti-Muslim rhetoric to maintain his popularity among Hindus?

Labor Participation Rate in India. Source: CMIE

Unemployment Crisis:

India lost 6.8 million salaried jobs and its labor participation rate (LPR) slipped from 40.41% to  40.15% in November, 2021, according to the Center for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE).  In addition to the loss of salaried jobs, the number of entrepreneurs in India declined by 3.5 million. India's labor participation rate of 40.15% is lower than Pakistan's 48%.   Here's an except of the latest CMIE report:

"India’s LPR is much lower than global levels. According to the World Bank, the modelled ILO estimate for the world in 2020 was 58.6 per cent (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.ZS). The same model places India’s LPR at 46 per cent. India is a large country and its low LPR drags down the world LPR as well. Implicitly, most other countries have a much higher LPR than the world average. According to the World Bank’s modelled ILO estimates, there are only 17 countries worse than India on LPR. Most of these are middle-eastern countries. These are countries such as Jordan, Yemen, Algeria, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Syria, Senegal and Lebanon. Some of these countries are oil-rich and others are unfortunately mired in civil strife. India neither has the privileges of oil-rich countries nor the civil disturbances that could keep the LPR low. Yet, it suffers an LPR that is as low as seen in these countries".

Labor Participation Rates in India and Pakistan. Source: World Bank...

Labor Participation Rates for Selected Nations. Source: World Bank/ILO

Youth  unemployment for ages15-24 in India is 24.9%, the highest in South Asia region. It is 14.8% in Bangladesh 14.8% and 9.2% in Pakistan, according to the International Labor Organization and the World Bank.  

Youth Unemployment in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. Source: ILO, WB

In spite of the headline GDP growth figures highlighted by the Indian and world media, the fact is that it has been jobless growth. The labor participation rate (LPR) in India has been falling for more than a decade. The LPR in India has been below Pakistan's for several years, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO). 

Indian GDP Sectoral Contribution Trend. Source: Ashoka Mody

Even before the COVID19 pandemic, India's labor participation rate was around 43%, lower than its neighbors'. Now it has slipped further to about 40%. Meanwhile, the Indian government has reported an 8.4% jump in economic growth in the July-to-September period compared with a contraction of 7.4% for the same period a year earlier.  This raises the following questions: Has India had jobless growth? Or its GDP figures are fudged?  If the Indian economy fails to deliver for the common man, will Prime Minister Narendra Modi step up his anti-Pakistan and anti-Muslim rhetoric to maintain his popularity among Hindus?

Indian Employment Trends By Sector. Source: CMIE Via Business Standard

Hunger Crisis:

'

India ranks 94th among 107 nations ranked by World Hunger Index in 2020. Other South Asians have fared better: Pakistan (88), Nepal (73), Bangladesh (75), Sri Lanka (64) and Myanmar (78) – and only Afghanistan has fared worse at 99th place. The COVID19 pandemic has worsened India's hunger and malnutrition. Tens of thousands of Indian children were forced to go to sleep on an empty stomach as the daily wage workers lost their livelihood and Prime Minister Narendra Modi imposed one of the strictest lockdowns in the South Asian nation. Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan opted for "smart lockdown" that reduced the impact on daily wage earners. China, the place where COVID19 virus first emerged, is among 17 countries with the lowest level of hunger. 

World Hunger Rankings 2020. Source: World Hunger Index Report

India Among Worst Hit: 

 

India has a 17.3% child wasting rate, the worst in the South Asia region. Child stunting is also extremely high across South Asia. “Data from 1991 through 2014 for Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan showed that stunting is concentrated among children from households facing multiple forms of deprivation, including poor dietary diversity, low levels of maternal education, and household poverty,” the World Hunger Report said. China, the place where COVID19 virus first emerged, is among 17 countries with the lowest level of hunger. 

Hunger and malnutrition are worsening in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia because of the coronavirus pandemic, especially in low-income communities or those already stricken by continued conflict. 

India has performed particularly poorly because of one of the world's strictest lockdowns imposed by Prime Minister Modi to contain the spread of the virus. 

Hanke Annual Misery Index: 

Pakistanis are less miserable than Indians in the economic sphere, according to the Hanke Annual Misery Index (HAMI) published in early 2021 by Professor Steve Hanke. With India ranked 49th worst and Pakistan ranked 39th worst, both countries find themselves among the most miserable third of the 156 nations ranked. Hanke teaches Applied Economics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Hanke explains it as follows: "In the economic sphere, misery tends to flow from high inflation, steep borrowing costs, and unemployment. The surefire way to mitigate that misery is through economic growth. All else being equal, happiness tends to blossom when growth is strong, inflation and interest rates are low, and jobs are plentiful". Several key global indices, including misery index, happiness index, hunger index, food affordability index, labor force participation rate,  ILO’s minimum wage data, all show that people in Pakistan are better off than their counterparts in India.   

 

Hanke's Annual Misery Index 2021. Source: National Review

Pakistan's Real GDP: 

Vehicles and home appliance ownership data analyzed by Dr. Jawaid Abdul Ghani of Karachi School of Business Leadership suggests that the officially reported GDP significantly understates Pakistan's actual GDP.  Indeed, many economists believe that Pakistan’s economy is at least double the size that is officially reported in the government's Economic Surveys. The GDP has not been rebased in more than a decade. It was last rebased in 2005-6 while India’s was rebased in 2011 and Bangladesh’s in 2013. Just rebasing the Pakistani economy will result in at least 50% increase in official GDP.  A research paper by economists Ali Kemal and Ahmad Waqar Qasim of PIDE (Pakistan Institute of Development Economics) estimated in 2012 that the Pakistani economy’s size then was around $400 billion. All they did was look at the consumption data to reach their conclusion. They used the data reported in regular PSLM (Pakistan Social and Living Standard Measurements) surveys on actual living standards. They found that a huge chunk of the country's economy is undocumented. 

Pakistan's service sector which contributes more than 50% of the country's GDP is mostly cash-based and least documented. There is a lot of currency in circulation. According to the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), the currency in circulation has increased to Rs. 7.4 trillion by the end of the financial year 2020-21, up from Rs 6.7 trillion in the last financial year,  a double-digit growth of 10.4% year-on-year.   Currency in circulation (CIC), as percent of M2 money supply and currency-to-deposit ratio, has been increasing over the last few years.  The CIC/M2 ratio is now close to 30%. The average CIC/M2 ratio in FY18-21 was measured at 28%, up from 22% in FY10-15. This 1.2 trillion rupee increase could have generated undocumented GDP of Rs 3.1 trillion at the historic velocity of 2.6, according to a report in The Business Recorder. In comparison to Bangladesh (CIC/M2 at 13%), Pakistan’s cash economy is double the size. Even a casual observer can see that the living standards in Pakistan are higher than those in Bangladesh and India. 

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[Riaz Haq]

#Modi’s #India: #Income of the poorest 20% #Indians plunged 53% in 5 yrs while the richest 20% saw their annual household income grow 39%. #Inequality #BJP #Hindutva #Covid | India News,The Indian Express

https://indianexpress.com/article/india/income-of-poorest-fifth-plu...

In a trend unprecedented since economic liberalisation, the annual income of the poorest 20% of Indian households, constantly rising since 1995, plunged 53% in the pandemic year 2020-21 from their levels in 2015-16. In the same five-year period, the richest 20% saw their annual household income grow 39% reflecting the sharp contrast Covid’s economic impact has had on the bottom of the pyramid and the top.

This stark K-shaped recovery emerges in the latest round of ICE360 Survey 2021, conducted by People’s Research on India’s Consumer Economy (PRICE), a Mumbai- based think-tank.

The survey, between April and October 2021, covered 200,000 households in the first round and 42,000 households in the second round. It was spread over 120 towns and 800 villages across 100 districts.

While the pandemic brought economic activity to a standstill for at least two quarters in 2020-21 and resulted in a 7.3% contraction in GDP in 2020-21, the survey shows that the pandemic hit the urban poor most and eroded their household income.

Splitting the population across five categories based on income, the survey shows that while the poorest 20% (first quintile) witnessed the biggest erosion of 53%, the second lowest quintile (lower middle category), too, witnessed a decline in their household income of 32% in the same period. While the quantum of erosion reduced to 9% for those in the middle income category, the top two quintiles — upper middle (20%) and richest (20%)— saw their household income rise by 7% and 39% respectively.

The survey shows that the richest 20% of households have, on average, added more income per household and more pooled income as a group in the past five years than in any five-year period earlier since liberalisation. Exactly the opposite has happened for the poorest 20% of households — on average, they have never actually seen a decrease in household income since 1995. Yet, in 2021, in a huge knockout punch caused by Covid, they earned half as much as they did in 2016.


How disruptive this distress has been for those at the bottom of the pyramid is reinforced by the fact that in the previous 11-year period between 2005 and 2016, while the household income of the richest 20% grew by 34%, the poorest 20% saw their household income surge by 183% at an average annual growth rate of 9.9%.

Coming in the run-up to the Budget, the task for the Government is cut out.

“As the Finance Minister is finalising her budget proposals for 2022-23 to give shape to the roadmap for economic revival of the country,” said Rajesh Shukla, MD and CEO, PRICE, “we need a K-shaped policy too that addresses the two ends of the spectrum and a lot more thinking on how to build the bridge between the two.”

This couldn’t be more timely. Said PRICE founder and one of the authors of the survey Rama Bijapurkar. “Or else, we are back to a tale of two Indias, a narrative we thought we were rapidly getting rid of. The good news is that we have built a far more efficient welfare state for the disbursal of benefit be it DBT or vaccination for all.”

The survey showed that while the richest 20% accounted for 50.2% of the total household income in 1995, their share has jumped to 56.3% in 2021. On the other hand, the share of the poorest 20% dropped from 5.9% to 3.3% in the same period.

As for India Inc, it has been in a better position to weather the disruption. The pandemic accelerated further formalisation of the economy with large companies benefitting at the cost of smaller ones. The survey also shows that while job losses were quite evident among Small and Medium Enterprises in the casual labour segment, large companies did not witness much of that.

[Riaz Haq]

#Modi’s #India: #Income of the poorest 20% #Indians plunged 53% in 5 yrs while the richest 20% saw their annual household income grow 39%. #Inequality #BJP #Hindutva #Covid | India News,The Indian Express

https://indianexpress.com/article/india/income-of-poorest-fifth-plu...

Even among the poorest 20 per cent, those in urban areas got more impacted than their rural counterparts as the first wave of Covid and the lockdown led to stringent curbs on economic activity in urban areas. This resulted in job losses and loss of income for the casual labour, petty traders household workers.

Data shows that there has been a rise in the share of poor in cities. While 90 per cent of the poorest 20 per cent in 2016, lived in rural India, that number had dropped to 70 per cent in 2021. On the other hand the share of poorest 20 per cent in urban areas has gone up from around 10 per cent to 30 per cent now.

“The data reflects that the casual labour, petty trader, household workers among others in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities got hit most by the pandemic. During the survey we also noticed that while in rural areas people in lower middle income category (Q2) have moved to middle income category (Q3), in the urban areas the shift has been downwards from Q3 to Q2. In fact, the rise in poverty level of urban poor has pulled down the household income of the entire category down,” said Shukla.

“The elephant in the room is investment,” said Bijapurkar. “Inspiring confidence through long-term policy stability and improving ease of doing business should make the tide rise again and sweep small business and individuals up along with it. Most big companies are doing well and don’t need more help but we need to work the economy for the bottom half.”

[Riaz Haq]

#India's #jobs crisis exasperates its youth. #Economic growth is producing fewer jobs than it used to, and disheartened jobseekers instead take menial roles or look to move overseas. #BJP #economy #Modi #unemployment https://news.yahoo.com/off-canada-indias-jobs-crisis-052922928.html... via @YahooNews

RAJPURA, India (Reuters) - Srijan Upadhyay supplied fried snacks to small eateries and roadside stalls in the poor eastern Indian state of Bihar before COVID-19 lockdowns forced most of his customers to close down, many without paying what they owed him.

With his business crippled, the 31-year-old IT undergraduate this month travelled to Rajpura town in Punjab state to meet with consultants who promised him a work visa for Canada. He brought along his neighbour who also wants a Canadian visa because his commerce degree has not helped him get a job.

"There are not enough jobs for us here, and whenever government vacancies come up, we hear of cheating, leaking of test papers," Upadhyay said, waiting in the lounge of Blue Line consultants. "I am sure we will get a job in Canada, whatever it is initially."

India's unemployment is estimated to have exceeded the global rate in five of the last six years, data from Mumbai-based the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) and International Labour Organization show, due to an economic slowdown that was exacerbated by the pandemic.

Having peaked at 23.5% in April 2020, India's joblessness rate dropped to 7.9% last month, according to CMIE.

The rate in Canada fell to a multi-month-low of 5.9% in December, while the OECD group of mostly rich countries reported a sixth straight month of decline in October, with countries including the United States suffering labour shortages as economic activity picks up.

Graphic: Unemployment Rate- https://graphics.reuters.com/INDIA-UNEMPLOYMENT/INDIA/zjvqknbzxvx/c...

What's worse for India, its economic growth is producing fewer jobs than it used to, and as disheartened jobseekers instead take menial roles or look to move overseas, the country's already low rate of workforce participation - those aged 15 and above in work or looking for it - is falling.

"The situation is worse than what the unemployment rate shows," CMIE Managing Director Mahesh Vyas told Reuters. "The unemployment rate only measures the proportion who do not find jobs of those who are actively seeking jobs. The problem is the proportion seeking jobs itself is shrinking."

Graphic: Labour participation rate (LPR)- https://graphics.reuters.com/INDIA-UNEMPLOYMENT/INDIA-UNEMPLOYMENT/...


Critics say such hopelessness among India's youth is one of the biggest failures of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who first came to power in 2014 with his as yet unfulfilled promise of creating millions of jobs.

It also risks India wasting its demographic advantage of having more than two-thirds of its 1.35 billion people of working age https://data.oecd.org/pop/working-age-population.htm.

The ministries of labour and finance did not respond to requests for comment. The labour ministry's career website had more than 13 million active jobseekers as of last month, with only 220,000 vacancies.

The ministry told parliament in December that "employment generation coupled with improving employability is the priority of the government", highlighting its focus on small businesses.

Modi's rivals are now trying to tap into the crisis ahead of elections in five states, including Punjab and most populous Uttar Pradesh, in February and March.

"Because of a lack of employment opportunities here, every kid looks at Canada. Parents hope to somehow send their kids to Canada," Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, whose Aam Admi Party is a front-runner in Punjab elections, told a recent public function there.

[Riaz Haq]

#India #Jobs Crisis: At least 10 million applicants were hoping to get the roughly 40,000 jobs. Jobless mob set fire to #Indian #Railway trains. #RailwaysProtest #BJP #Modi #Bihar #UP #Hindutva #Islamophobia #unemployed #Unemployment https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/protests-over-railway-job...


The protests over problems with recruitment for railway jobs in the states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, may well be India’s first large-scale unemployment riots. The protests have taken place across a large number of places in these two states. News reports suggest that at least 10 million applicants were hoping to get the roughly 40,000 jobs which were on offer. The politics on the protests notwithstanding – opposition parties have attacked the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over both the issue and police’s handling of it – they ought to be treated as a bellwether for the socio-economic unrest which India’s job markets can generate. Here are four charts which put this in perspective.

India has among the worst labour market outcomes for young people

An international comparison of some of India’s peers and neighbours using World Bank data shows that India has among the worst labour market outcomes for the young (the 15-24-year-old population). This can be seen in persistence of high youth unemployment rates despite a very low labour force participation rate (LPFR) among this cohort. LPFR is defined as the share of economically active population – either working or looking for a job – in the given age group. This number was just 27.1% for the 15-24-year-old population in India, which is significantly lower than other countries. Despite such a low LFPR, youth unemployment rate is among the highest in India. Unemployment rate is defined as the share of unemployed persons in the labour force. A time-series analysis shows that things have become worse on this front in India in the last 15 years.

[Riaz Haq]

Millions of #Indian workers fled to villages amid #COVID #pandemic. Number of people working in #manufacturing fell by half over 4 years ending in March 2021. Around 75 million people in #India slipped into extreme #poverty. #Modi #unemployment https://www.wsj.com/articles/indias-economy-hinges-on-the-return-of... via @WSJ

The nationwide lockdown in 2020 set off the biggest wave of migration since India gained independence in 1947. In the first months of the pandemic, workers traveled hundreds of miles by train, bus, bicycle and even on foot.

While some returned to the cities at various points during the pandemic, another deadly Covid-19 surge last spring, and the most recent spike, have caused further uncertainty among workers about the costs of urban life.

Economists calculate that around 32 million people took up agricultural work in the year that ended on June 30, 2020, an estimate based on government data. That continued last year, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy Pvt., CMIE, an independent think tank in Mumbai. The share of agriculture in total employment in the year ended June 30, 2021, rose 1.4 percentage point from a year earlier, according to its data.

Some economists believe workers will return en masse after the pandemic subsides. “Agriculture can’t support so many people for so long,” said Sachchidanand Shukla, chief economist at the Mahindra Group, a conglomerate that includes businesses in information technology and vehicle manufacturing.

Mr. Nayal, the former call-center worker, isn’t sure of that. He lives in Satbunga, a village of about 1,400 people who live and work on land spread across mountain slopes.

The village head, Priyanka Bisht, estimated about 250 mostly men left for jobs in the city over the past five years. Most have returned, she said, bringing new skills and experience that benefit Satbunga. Ms. Bisht said she believed most prefer to stay, but added, “Let’s wait and watch how it turns out.”

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The number of people working in manufacturing has fallen by half over the four years that ended in March 2021, according to an analysis by Ashoka University’s Centre for Economic Data and Analysis based on CMIE data. “The decade that just went by, it can be called a decade of job loss,” said Kunal Kumar Kundu, an India economist at French bank Société Générale SA . “That is disastrous for an economy.”

India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said a recently announced government program to boost domestic manufacturing will create millions of jobs.

About half of India’s working-age population is employed or seeking work, one of the world’s lowest labor-force participation rates, according to the ILO. Adding to the job squeeze, an estimated four million-plus young people join the workforce each year.

[Riaz Haq]

State of
Global Hiring
Report 2021

https://f.hubspotusercontent30.net/hubfs/19498232/State%20of%20hiri...

Salaries are rising fastest in 
 Mexico (57%), Canada (38%), 
 Pakistan (27%), and Argentina (21%) 
 for jobs in marketing, sales, and product.

India 8%, Philippines 7% & Russia 4%

----------------

Top three countries where people hired through Deel were located:

1.Philippines 2. India 3. Pakistan

---------------

Top 3 roles hired through deel:

1. Software engineer 2. Virtual assistant 3. Custom Support Executive


------

State of Global Hiring
Report 2021


Global hiring has never been more popular
between pandemic-related office closures,
fierce talent competition, and a bevy of online
tools enabling collaboration and reducing
hiring complications. But where is it popular,
and for what roles? What countries are hiring
more than ever, and from where? What’s
happening to wages as demand increases?

Using data pulled from more than 100,000 work contracts from 

over 150 countries, along with 500,000 third-party data points, 

a new report from global hiring and payroll company Deel gives a
breakdown of what’s happening within the global job landscape.
Trends are tracked over six months—from July 2021 through December 2021.

[Riaz Haq]

#Unemployment Crisis in #Modi's #India: This burning train is a symbol of the anger of India's out-of-work youth. #Indian #economy has slowed down since 2010. Consequently, the pace of #job creation has been on a steady decline since 2011. #BJP #Hindutva https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/03/16/1084139074/thi...

This high unemployment rate among the college educated has caused what the World Economic Forum calls "widespread youth disillusionment," claiming it's a threat to India's economic stability – and is part of a growing crisis in India's job market. Those who work in the so-called "informal sector" – jobs in construction or agricultural labor with no guarantee of work or a wage from day-to-day, have long had difficulty supporting themselves and their families. And now, even education is no longer a guarantee of a job. Many educated workers complain of a lack of job security, employment benefits and salaries that often fail to meet minimum wage requirements.



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Indian economy has slowed down since 2010, according to former chief economic adviser to the Government of India Arvind Subramanian. Consequently, the pace of job creation has been on a steady decline since 2011.

In 2014, India elected the Hindu nationalist leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Narendra Modi, who promised to create 100 million jobs by 2022. His administration launched campaigns like Make In India, Startup India and Skill India, intended to encourage investment across sectors and aimed at both those with education degrees and workers in the informal sector.

But there was a massive impact on employment opportunities after Modi's announcement in November 2016 that he was taking 86% of India's paper money out of circulation — part of a demonetization policy that aimed to tamp corruption. According to a 2019 study by scholars at Azim Premji University, 5 million people lost jobs due to major shocks to the economy from this policy.

Then came the pandemic. Less than five years after demonetization, COVID-19 struck, adversely affecting most sectors of the economy and pushing up the rate of unemployment up to 20% in June 2020. Since then, the rate has dropped to around 8% for India overall, which still means a massive number of unemployed in a population of 1.4 billion.

Sarvesh Dhobi has moved about 1,000 miles east from his hometown in Surat to study in a coaching center in Prayagraj. He'd like to land a job in media and communications – but is not hopeful. "We are traditionally launderers, my father has a laundry business," he says. "I might have to go back home and lend a hand in that."

And Gautam notes that there are unforeseen consequences to being one of India's many unemployed young people.

"My family pressures me to get married, but who will marry an unemployed man?" he asks.

[Riaz Haq]

#India's 2022 #GDP Growth Cut to 4.6% Due to #Ukraine War. India will face restraints on several fronts: #energy access & prices, primary commodity bottlenecks, reflexes from #trade sanctions, #food #inflation, tightening policies & financial instability.
https://thewire.in/economy/indias-2022-gdp-growth-downgraded-to-4-6...


United Nations: India’s projected economic growth for 2022 has been downgraded by over 2% to 4.6% by the United Nations, a decrease attributed to the ongoing war in Ukraine, with New Delhi expected to face restraints on energy access and prices, reflexes from trade sanctions, food inflation, tightening policies and financial instability, according to a UN report released on Thursday.

The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) report downgraded its global economic growth projection for 2022 to 2.6% from 3.6% due to shocks from the Ukraine war and changes in macroeconomic policies that put developing countries particularly at risk.

The report said while Russia will experience a deep recession this year, significant slowdowns in growth are expected in parts of Western Europe and Central, South and South-East Asia.

India was forecast to grow at 6.7% in 2022 and this projection has been downgraded to 4.6% by UNCTAD.

The report said as some of the other economies in South and Western Asia may gain some benefits from fast growth of demand and prices of energy, they will be hampered by the adversities in primary commodity markets, especially food inflation, and will be further hit by inherent financial instabilities.



India in particular will face restraints on several fronts: energy access and prices, primary commodity bottlenecks, reflexes from trade sanctions, food inflation, tightening policies and financial instability, it said.

The report has downgraded the GDP growth of the US from 3% to 2.4%. China will also see growth decrease to 4.8% from 5.7%. The report projects a deep recession for Russia, with growth decelerating from 2.3% to -7.3%.

The report said the Russian economy faces stringent external constraints imposed by the sanctions.

While Russia is still exporting oil and gas, and will therefore see compensating increases of revenue due to high prices, sanctions severely limit the use of foreign exchange earnings for the purchase of imports or debt servicing.

Russia will experience severe shortages of a wide range of imported goods, high inflation and a substantially devalued currency. While the state will likely act to cushion the shock and limit unemployment and the fall of household incomes, its capacity is limited.

Trade with China and some other partners will continue, but they will not be able to provide substitutes for the wide range of imported goods that the Russian Federation currently cannot access. Assuming the sanctions remain in place through 2022, even if the fighting in Ukraine ends, Russia will experience a severe recession, it said.

The report noted that a number of developing country central banks also engaged in quantitative easing: active purchasing of bonds in the open market.

A small number of developing country central banks engaged in private sector bond purchases, but public bond buying was more widespread: the central banks of India, Thailand, Colombia and South Africa, among others, engaged in public bond purchases.

In the global monetary hierarchy, the place of a national currency today is determined less by the size of its domestic production base than by the size of its domestic financial sector.

The currencies of Brazil, Russia, India and China account for no more than 3.5% of the $6.6 trillion daily turnover in the forex markets, a ratio barely one-tenth of the United States dollar’s 44%, it said.

UNCTAD said the ongoing war in Ukraine is likely to reinforce the monetary tightening trend in advanced countries following similar moves that began in late 2021 in several developing countries due to inflationary pressures, with expenditure cuts also anticipated in upcoming budgets.

[Riaz Haq]

A 2-day nationwide strike in #India called by hundreds of thousands of workers to protest #Modi gov't #economic policies has spared no corner of India. supporters are blocking roads, train tracks & public transportation absent from streets. #privatization https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/28/world/asia/india-modi-general-st...


The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made a strong pitch for the privatization of some state-owned assets that it characterizes as underperforming. Government-backed financial institutions are protesting a federal move to privatize them and also protesting a bill that is expected to reduce the minimum government holding in public sector banks from 51 percent down to 26 percent.

With bank unions joining the strike, the State Bank of India, a government institution, warned its customers that banking services were likely to be affected Monday and Tuesday.

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As Indian authorities raced to roll out contingency plans to deal with the strike, the country’s federal power ministry directed all publicly run electricity companies to be on high alert to ensure that hospitals, defense installations and railways continue to be supplied with power.

The shutdown, which began early Monday, was called by dozens of labor unions representing workers from both public and private sectors. Union leaders said the protests were aimed at a variety of government policies that they said harmed workers, farmers and Indians in general. They also said they were demanding an immediate scrapping of a new labor law that allows contract work, gives employers greater leeway in setting wages and increases working hours.

“The present government is anti-workers and against poor people,” said Arthanari Soundararajan, an opposition politician from Communist Party of India (Marxist) in the state of Tamil Nadu.

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“They are selling railways, airports, ports, oil industry and gas refineries and our power transmission sector, there is nothing left,” Mr. Saxena said. “Whatever our forefathers have built in this country is being now sold to big corporate and private entrepreneurs.”

[Riaz Haq]

Pakistan’s economy created 5.5 million jobs during the past three years –on an average 1.84 million jobs a year, which is far higher than yearly average of creation of new jobs during the 2008-18 decade, reveals findings of Labour Force Survey (LFS) published by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS).


https://tribune.com.pk/story/2350416/employment-boom-in-last-3-years


In terms of sector, the share of agriculture sector in total employment went down from 38.5% from three years ago to 37.4%. But the share of the industrial sector increased from 23.7% to 25.4%. The services sector share in employment also decreased from nearly 38% to 37.2%.

In absolute terms, during the past three years about 2.5 million jobs were created in the industrial sector compared with 2.1 million created during the five-year PML-N tenure. Another 1.4 million jobs were created in the agriculture sector and 1.7 million in the services sector. During the PML-N tenure around 4.3 million jobs had been created in the services sector.

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the Sindh province remained an exception where unemployment rate significantly went down to just 3.9% in three years as the unemployment rate increased in all other three provinces –the highest one recorded at 8.8% in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) during the last fiscal year, according to Labour Force Survey 2020-21.

The national unemployment rate stood at 6.3% at the end of the last fiscal year, which is better than the preceding year but higher than 5.8% recorded at the end of the PML-N tenure, according to the survey conducted by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. The Planning Ministry and the PBS have not yet officially released the survey.

The survey findings were endorsed on Wednesday by a technical committee, comprising official and independent experts, according to the officials of the Ministry of Planning and Development. The PBS covered 6,808 enumeration blocks and 99,904 households for the survey purposes.

The findings showed that the number of employed people increased to 67.3 million by June 2021 –up from 61.7 million at the end of the PML-N tenure.

However, the official unemployment rate that in June 2018 was 5.8% went up to 6.3% at the end of the third year of the PTI rule. The unemployment rate was the lowest in Sindh at 3.9% that is ruled by the Pakistan Peoples Party but it was highest in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa at 8.8%, followed by 6.8% in Punjab –the two provinces governed by the ruling party.


A key reason for an overall low unemployment rate of 6.3% was inclusion of contributing family workers in the definition of the employed people whose share in total employment was above one-fifth. The share of employers remained unchanged at 1.4% in three years. The employees also went down from 42.4% to 42% in three years but own-account workers' share went up to 35.5%, according to the survey.

During 2018-23, on an average 1.84 million jobs a year were created –far better than the yearly average recorded during the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz and the PPP governments, according to the survey’s findings.

During the five year of the PPP (2008-13), about 6.9 million jobs had been created with a yearly average of 1.4 million. Compared to this, during the PML-N 2013-18’s tenure, about 5.7 million jobs had been created with an average of 1.14 million a year.

The average economic growth rate during the PML-N five years rule was significantly higher than the average growth rate during the PTI tenure. For the first time in the past 70 years, the country had also witnessed 1% contraction in the Gross Domestic Product during the fiscal year 2019-20 when the world was struck by the global pandemic.

The survey findings revealed that the sectoral contributions in job creation were uneven and the majority of the new jobs had been created in the industrial sector.

Prime Minister Imran Khan had promised to create 10 million jobs during his government tenure and the creation of 5.5 million jobs suggested that the economy might generate a total 9 million jobs by 2023 at the current rate.