Minority Report: Unemployment rate rises among religious minorities in 2023-24 | Economics and politics news

High poverty despite high unemployment

At first glance, this may seem confusing because Muslims have a much higher poverty rate than others, as the Rajinder Sachar Committee pointed out earlier this century. However, deeper analysis explains the link between rising poverty and lower unemployment rates among Muslims.

Amitabh Kundu, who headed the post-Sachar review committee, said Muslim poverty is much higher than that of Hindus, especially when excluding the Scheduled Caste population.

The Sachar Committee stated that Muslims faced very high levels of poverty. While the date is fixed, the committee stated that 22.7 percent of India's total population was poor in 2004-05, with the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes jointly worst off at 35 percent, followed by Muslims at 31 percent. .

As for why unemployment rates were higher among Sikhs and Christians, Jawaharlal Nehru University economics professor Praveen Jha explained that a “catch-up effect” could be at play due to the vulnerability of jobs after the Covid. “Sectors of society that are economically better off hope for better employment opportunities in times of economic weakness. And Sikhs and Christians are certainly better off than other minorities,” says Jha.

Unemployment for all minorities was higher in urban areas than in rural areas in 2023-24.

Disguised unemployment

Kundu, who is currently a senior economist and professor emeritus at LJ University, Ahmedabad, said the existence of disguised unemployment reduces unemployment rates for all communities in rural areas compared to cities. For example, urban Muslims have the lowest unemployment rate among all religious segments.

Explaining the reasons behind this, Kundu says: “Generally, the poor will take up any job much below the minimum wage because they cannot afford unemployment…” This, to some extent, explains the lower unemployment rate compared to Muslims in urban areas. . for the Hindus.”

The Sachar Committee said that the condition of all Muslims was slightly better than that of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, although slightly worse in urban areas. Minority unemployment rates in rural areas are higher than across India.

However, when it comes to urban female unemployment, Muslims have lower rates than Hindus. Kundu attributed this to the large number of Muslim women not looking for jobs. “In addition to poverty factors, sociocultural constraints may explain Muslim women's reluctance to actively seek employment in urban areas,” he says.

Reluctant job seekers

This hesitancy to find employment is also reflected in the low labor force participation rate (LFPR), which is the proportion of the population seeking employment. In 2017-18, Muslims and Sikhs had lower LFPRs than the national average.

However, the interfaith LFPR increased by more than 8 percentage points between 2017-18 and 2023-24. But only in the case of Muslims the growth was less than 8 percent.

Among employed Muslims, the majority are self-employed and a small proportion have regular employment. Here, domestic help is not taken into consideration.

In comparison, a higher proportion of Christians and Sikhs are in paid employment, although most of them are self-employed here. The smallest proportion of workers are casual workers among Christians and Sikhs.

This is also true for Hindus. Christians and Sikhs have a higher proportion of this class of workers than Hindus. In this case, Christians have the best quality of service.

However, in the five years ending in 2023-24, the percentage of regular salaried employees among all religious communities has declined. Muslims recorded the largest decline, while Sikhs recorded the smallest decline.

Around 21.5 percent of workers from the Muslim community were gainfully employed in 2019-20, but their percentage fell to 18 percent in 2023-24, showing a decline of 3.5 percentage points.

For Christians, 27.6 percent of workers had regular jobs in 2023-24, compared to 29.9 percent in 2019-20, a decrease of 2.3 percentage points.

Regular workers in the Sikh community fell by 0.7 percentage points. 26.7 percent of community workers had salaried jobs in 2023–24, down from 27.4 percent in 2019–20.

In comparison, Hindus have seen the smallest deterioration in employment patterns. About 21.9 percent of workers were in regular paid employment in 2023-24, down 0.8 percentage points from 22.7 percent in 2019-20.

Overall, just over a fifth of workers had regular jobs. The percentage of paid employment decreased to 21.7 percent in 2023-24 from 22.9 percent in 2019-20.

Literacy Link

There may be a broader link between the trends cited above and literacy rates. Although the community-wide literacy rate increased during the five-year period, Muslims had the lowest literacy rate in 2019-20 as well as in 2023-24. Hindus witnessed the lowest proportion of increase in literacy rate during this period.

The literacy rate among Muslims increased by 2.6 percentage points from 75 percent in 2019-20 to 77.6 percent in 2023-24. In 2023-24, 79.6 percent were literate Hindus, an increase of 1.9 percentage points from 77.7 percent five years earlier. Meanwhile, literacy among Sikhs increased by 3.7 percentage points from 79.1 percent in 2019-20 to 82.8 percent in 2023-24.

The Christian literacy rate increased from 84.3 percent to 87.6 percent during the period, recording an increase of 3.3 percentage points.

Overall, the literacy rate increased by 2.1 percentage points from 77.6 percent in 2019-20 to 79.7 percent in 2023-24.