The signs of worry rise on the horizon for the jobseekers in Odisha as the unemployment rate in the State during the first three months of the calendar year 2018 zoomed to a high of 6.77 per cent against 4.7 per cent in last quarter (October – December) of the year 2017.

With the unemployment scenario hardening in the State, Odisha, therefore, figured 7th among the top 10 major States in the country with high unemployment rate in first quarter (Q1) of 2018.

Such an evolving critical scenario on the employment front in Odisha has been brought to fore recently by country’s leading private economic think-thank, the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) along with BSE (Bombay Stock Exchange). According to the CMIE-BSE data, the unemployment rate in Odisha in January 2018 has been around 5.5 per cent that has further increased to 7 per cent and 7.8 per cent in February and March 2018, respectively. In contrast, the unemployment rate was around 2 per cent and 2.9 per cent in November and December 2017, respectively.

The CMIE has estimated the unemployment rate based on direct interviews of job seekers collected under the CMIE’s Consumer Pyramid Survey covering over 1.61lakh households with around 5.8lakh members of over 15-yr age across the States, which the CMIE claimed as the largest ever sample size to collect employment – unemployment data in the country.

The CMIE’s unemployment tracker has a significant revelation for Odisha. It finds that when unemployment rate is analysed as per the basis of maximum education level attained by job-seekers in the State, the disturbing fact then comes to fore is higher the education level worse is the unemployment rate in the State. The CMIE-BSE data, further, reveals that the unemployment rate in category of ‘graduate or and above’ is ominously high at over 12 per cent in Odisha; whereas the rate of unemployment is around 8 per cent in the category of education level of ‘10th – 12th standard’. In contrast, the respective unemployment rates for categories of ‘no education’, ‘up to 5th’, and ‘9-10th’ are around 3 per cent and around 2.5 per cent each.

This despite the fact that the labour force population of categories like ’10 – 12th and graduate or above’ in the State is mere 99.45 lakh in comparison to the labour force population of over 2.4crore for the categories like ‘no education to 9thstandard’. In absolute numbers, the counts of higher educated unemployed in Odisha have crossed 19.9 lakh and the counts of uneducated unemployed touched around 64.8 lakh. Approximately, over 85 lakh in Odisha have no jobs to find an employment.

What is worrying for Odisha is when the unemployment rate in 2017 was around 3 per cent in first 4-months of 2017, later it inched up to end at 4.7 per cent in last 4-months of 2017. However, it has jumped to around 7 per cent in first three months of 2018, and the trend indicates the rate this year looks all set to breach the high unemployment rate of over 8 per cent the State had in 2016.