India’s unemployment rate rose to 7.45 per cent in February, much higher than 7.14 per cent recorded in the previous month, data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) showed on Wednesday.

While the urban unemployment rate declined to 7.93 per cent in February from 8.55 per cent in the previous month, the rural unemployment rate rose sharply to 7.23 per cent from 6.48 per cent, the data showed.

In December last year, the overall unemployment rate in the country was 8.30 per cent with urban unemployment at 10.09 per cent and rural unemployment at 7.44 per cent.

Tech innovation

As much as 90 per cent of increases in per capita income come from technological innovation. In India, we have a scenario where the majority of the population is dependent on agriculture and construction sectors.

“Construction sector, of late, is not performing well and not able to create jobs for the people moving from the rural agriculture sector. And many of our work force are not technologically skilled to get absorbed into the high skilled manufacturing and services sector,” said Dr Nilanjan Banik, Economist at Mahindra University