NEW DELHI : More than one in four workers in rural India are unemployed and the situation may worsen with millions returning to the villages from the cities as the nationwide lockdown in place to check the spread of coronavirus causes large-scale job losses.
The rural job loss rate in the country rose to 25.09% in the week ended 24 May from 22.79% a week earlier, according to weekly job loss data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) issued on Monday.
This even as the urban unemployment rate fell more than four percentage points in the same period. The rural unemployment rate of 25.09% is the highest since India went into a lockdown on 25 March, except for the weeks ended 19 April and 3 May when it was more than 26%.