Lockdown-led Unemployment - Social Disparities

What is the issue?

• Data from Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE)’s Consumer Pyramids Household Survey (CPHS) was released recently.
• Alongside massive unemployment, there are socio-cultural disparities in the impact resulted by the lockdown and unemployment.

What is the current overall employment scenario?

• The average number of employed persons between March 2019 and March 2020 was over 403 million.
• In other words, this was the scenario one year preceding the lockdown.
• In April 2020, this number came down to a little over 282 million.
• This is roughly a 30% drop from the earlier figures.

• In other words, employment in April 2020 was 70% of the average in the preceding year.

What is the impact on disadvantaged sections?

• In India, there are clear gender and caste disparities in the early lockdown-induced job losses.
• Consequently, women have suffered relatively more than men (rural women more than urban women).
• Also, Dalits (Scheduled Castes), specifically rural Dalits, suffered relatively more than upper castes.

• Rural women’s employment has suffered the maximum relative loss.
• Evidently, the effects of the pandemic-induced lockdown have not been neutral with respect to social identity.

What does the CMIE data suggest?

A comparison of April 2020 (post-lockdown) with November-December 2019 (pre-lockdown) employment status reveals certain trends.

• The drop in male employment is greater than female by 17.6 percentage points.
• However, the possibility of losing jobs is more for women.
• Women who were employed in the pre-lockdown phase were 23.5 percentage points less likely to be employed in the post-lockdown phase.
• This is compared to men who were employed in the pre-lockdown phase.
• Male heads of household were 11.3 percentage points more likely to be employed in post-lockdown phase than female heads.
• The caste differences are relatively smaller than the gender differences.
• But the lockdown affected employment of the SC-ST-OBC groups relatively more adversely than the higher ranked group of castes.
• Women and Dalits have suffered disproportionately more job losses.
• However, the reality is that, risky, hazardous and stigmatized jobs are exclusively their preserve.
• All frontline health workers (ASHA/ Accredited Social Health Activists) are women.
• On the other hand, evidently, manual scavengers are exclusively being Dalits.
• Thus, for most women and Dalits, the choice seems to be between unemployment and jobs that come with disease, infection and social stigma.
• In all, the pre-existing inequalities along gender and caste lines are only likely to get reinforced with COVID-19-led economic changes.
• It calls for recognition and redressal by concerted government measures.

How vulnerable are women?

• Between 2004-5 and 2017-18, the male-female gaps in educational attainment have narrowed considerably in India.
• However, gaps in labour force participation have widened.
• Female labour force participation rate is persistently low in India over decades.
• It has declined sharply over the last 15 years.
• Globally - It is expected that in the Covid-19 pandemic, women are likely to be more vulnerable to losing their jobs compared to men.
• There are nearly 220 million women employed in sectors that are potentially vulnerable to job cuts.
• Of the 44 million workers in vulnerable sectors globally, 31 million women face potential job cuts, compared to 13 million men.

Source: Indian Express