The unemployment rate in India rose to 8.30% in December from 8.00% in November, data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy showed on Sunday. This is the highest increase in the last 16 months, reported Reuters.

The joblessness rate in urban areas in December rose to 10.09% from 8.96% in November, while in rural regions it fell to 7.44% from 7.55% in November.

The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy calculates unemployment rate in India to provide estimates of the country’s workforce based on a panel size of over 1.78 lakh households.

The rise in the unemployment rate was not as bad as it may seem since it came on top of a healthy increase in the labour participation rate, which increased to 40.48% in December, the highest in 12 months, Mahesh Vyas, the managing director of the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, told Reuters.

“Most importantly, the employment rate has increased in December to 37.1%, which again is the highest since January 2022,” he told Reuters.

The data released on Sunday also showed that the unemployment rate was the highest in Haryana at 37.4%, followed by Rajasthan at 28.5%, Delhi at 20.8%, and Bihar at 19.1%.

Odisha showed the lowest unemployment rate at 0.9%, followed by Gujarat at 2.3%, Karnataka at 2.5%, Meghalaya at 2.7% and Maharashtra at 3.1%.

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