Six million white-collar jobs lost during coronavirus lockdown, CMIE data shows

Unemployment rates amongst white-collar professionals dropped to the levels of 2016, with over 6 million jobs lost due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) data showed.

According to the 20th wave of CMIE’s Consumer Pyramids Household Survey, nearly six million white-collar workers lost their jobs between May and August 2020. This does not include job loss in the month of April 2020, which was arguably the worst month in terms of job cuts during the lockdown.

According to CMIE, white-collar workers are professionals like “engineers including software engineers, physicians, teachers, accountants, analysts and the type, who are professionally qualified and are employed in some private or government organisation.”

This does not include self-employed workers in similar roles.

India's unemployment rate soars to 27.11% amid Covid-19 crisis: CMIE

Employment in the white-collar industry had been steadily rising since 2016 until the pandemic hit.

According to the data collated by the agency, the number of workers in the industry fell from 18.8 million in August-May 2019 to 12.2 million in August-May 2020. This constitutes a difference of 6.6 million labourers in the country.

The agency reported that all gains made in the employment rate in the sector since 2016, were reversed by the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns.

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Interestingly, white-collar clerical jobs, of data-entry operators, BPO/KTO workers etc, remained largely unaffected by the pandemic.

However, jobs in this sector have been declining steadily over the last few years. In 2018, there were 15 million white-collar clerical jobs, the number dropped to 12 million in 2020. However, there was no significant drop reported during the Covid-19 lockdown.