Almost 78 per cent jobs lost in media and publishing industry in 5 years: CMIE survey

At least 78% of those working in the media and publishing industry have lost their jobs, according to a survey by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE). The media and publishing industry employed over 10.3 lakh people across India in September 2016 and now in August 2021, it employs 2.3 lakh only.

If one looked at a 12 month comparison between 2016-17 and 2020-2021, then the drop in employment is 56%. In 2016-17, there were 8,33,115 people in the publishing industry, while in 2020-21, there are only 3.66,723 people employed, tweeted commentator Aunindyo Chakravarty, citing CMIE data.

According to CMIE, the drop began to happen in early 2018 and during the second wave in 2021, a lot more people in the media and publishing industry were laid off.

However, it is not just in the publishing industry, which suffered rampant job losses. The unemployment rate touched 8.3% compared to 7% in July with 1.9 million jobs lost in the country in August, mainly from the farm sector, stated CMIE.

The employment in agriculture fell by 8.7 million in August while the non-farm jobs increased by 6.8 million during the same time. Of these, employment in the form of business persons increased by nearly 4 million and those in the form of small traders and daily wage labourers increased by 2.1 million. Salaried jobs increased marginally, by 0.7 million, during the month, it said.

As per CMIE, the manufacturing sector has permanently lost about 10 million jobs in the pandemic-induced lockdowns. Before the Covid-19 crisis, the manufacturing sector employed about 40 million which fell to 21 million in April 2020 and quickly climbed back to a level just short of 30 million by July 2020. Then the second wave brought employment in manufacturing down again to 26 million before recovering to nearly 29 million in July. But in August it slipped back to 28 million.

CMIE stated that this fall of nearly million jobs in August is disappointing as it reveals how unreliable manufacturing jobs have become and underscored that the 40-million level that manufacturing was at before the lockdowns seems too distant now, almost out of reach.

In May 2021, investment bank Barclays said that India was losing about $8 billion- about Rs 60,000 crore- every week in May. The total loss will be $117 billion (Rs 8.5 trillion), or 3.75 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), according to Barclays.

In April 2021, the unemployment rate went up to 8 per cent, the labour participation rate stabilised at 40%. In May, the situation worsened. The unemployment rate rose to 14.5 per cent, then became 14.7% in the week which ended on May 23.

When India was hit by the pandemic in April 2020, about 126 million jobs were lost. About 90 million of those jobs were of daily wagers.