In such a frustrating situation, about 6.6 million people just moved out of the job market in January 2022 because they were too disappointed to search for a job. The real reason was that there were no jobs in the market.However, their going out from the job market created a false rosy picture of unemployment rate that fell from 7.91 per cent in December 2021 to 6.57 per cent in January 2022, because the frustrated unemployed going out of job market were no longer counted as unemployed, as per the system of counting jobless people.Unemployed people cease to be counted as such if they stop searching for a job, whatsoever may be their reason.Unemployment rate of 8.1 per cent in February should be interpreted in this backdrop taking into account how the January unemployment rate of 6.57 per cent actually concealed the real frightening level of unemployment.Rising of unemployment rate to 8.1 per cent in February was not because the frustrated unemployed who had lately left the job market out of frustration after not finding a job in the job market have returned to search for one, but because employment conditions in the rural areas deteriorated sharply.Rise in rural joblessness to a 251 basis points (bps) pushed up the rural unemployment rate to 8.35 per cent in February, which is worst in the last eight months, according to the CMIE data. The time of such a rise in unemployment in rural areas should be a matter of great concern because kharif season is just ending and rabi season is in progress during which the rural folks should have found jobs in agricultural activities.However, a large number of rural people count neither get jobs in agricultural activities or other non-farm sectors, nor in the rural job guarantee scheme MNREGA due to lack of funds in several states.The situation is likely to get even worse in coming days because the Union Budget 2022-23 has cut MNREGA fund by 25 per cent at a time where there was still demand for jobs.
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