The Covid-19 pandemic is the dreadful pandemic of this period and perchance the life-threatening, many of us have never been faced so far. Due to the pandemic we are not only bearing implausible health risks but also facing a great risk to Indian economy.
It is observed by experts that if covid-19 impact remains same for few more months, there could be severe job losses in India and the most impacted sectors could be aviation, travel, hospitality, retail, manufacturing and automotive sectors.
Read more: COVID 19- Creating a Paradigm Shift in Education System of India
The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), a leading industry association in India, carried out an online survey. The CII report has brought to light some scary facts about job loss in India. “On the jobs front, about 52 per cent of the firms foresee job losses in their respective sectors, resulting from the impact of the coronavirus outbreak and the ensuing lockdown. While the proportion of jobs that are expected to be cut are quite staggered, a significant proportion of the firms (47 per cent) expect less than 15 per cent job losses, while 32 per cent of the firms expect to shed about 15-30 per cent of jobs once the lockdown ends,” stated a PTI report.
The Centre for the Monitoring of Indian Economy (CMIE) estimated that only 27.7 per cent of the working-age population (103 crore, by the report) was employed soon after the lockdown began. That translates to 28.5 crore. So, within two weeks, the number of gainfully employed came down from 40.4 crore to 28.5 crore, a drop of 11.9 crore. That in effect means that about 12 crore Indians lost employment in the first two weeks of the lockdown itself. If, say, 8 crore of these are the main or the only earner of their family, then one-third of the country’s 25 crore households (GOI figures from 2011) are today facing a livelihood crisis, stated ETBrandEquity May 28, 2020.
We do not yet that when we will overcome from this pandemic. But we do know that the crisis of unemployment is already mind-bending. The government must come up with new and fast scheme to save livelihoods and lives.
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