New Delhi: The parliament security breach has refocused attention on the unemployment situation in India. While government data portrays a picture of declining joblessness among the youth, private surveys and experts say otherwise.In such a scenario, it would be interesting to look at two sets of data – the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data, for July 2022 to June 2023, and the unemployment data released by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE).The National Sample Survey Office launched the PLFS in 2017. The latest survey – the sixth annual report – was released for the period from July 2022 to June 2023.According to PLFS data, conducted by the Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation, the unemployment rate among graduates in the age group of 15 years and above has declined to 13.4% in 2022-23 from 14.9% a year ago.However, the same survey also showed that more number of people are opting for self-employment over salaried jobs.The survey does not explicitly indicate the number of graduates who are self-employed, unlike the detailed breakdown provided for the calculation of the WPR.The worker population ratio (WPR) is the share of the working-age population that has work.WPR for persons of age 15 years and above has increased to 56% in 2022-23 from 52.9% in 2021-22 and 52.6% in 2020-21.In rural areas, WPR for graduates among persons of age 15 years and above has increased to 58.3% in 2022-23 from 56.3% in 2021-22, 53.5% in 2020-21, and 50.9% in 2019-20.In urban areas, WPR for graduates among persons of age 15 years and above has increased to 53.8% in 2022-23 from 51.8% in 2021-22, 50.3% in 2020-21, and 50.4% in 2019-20.Overall, it increased to 55.8% in 2022-23 from 53.9% in 2021-22, 51.8% in 2020-21, and 50.6% in 2019-20.In contrast, the labour force participation rate (LFPR) – the share of population which is looking for work – has seen a downward trend in the past seven years. The decline was witnessed before the COVID-19 pandemic, and the pandemic only exacerbated the situation, CMIE said in June 2023.In the financial year 2022-23, the overall LFPR was 39.5%, the lowest since only FY17, including the pandemic years, the Hindu reported, citing CMIE data.Among men, it was 66% and among women, it was 8.7% – both the lowest since at least FY17, the newspaper reported.So, an increasing share of Indians in the working age were neither employed nor willing to seek employment even after the pandemic, it noted.In November, Bloomberg noted that economists have come to rely on CMIE data for a better assessment of the labour market as its figures are based on monthly surveys as opposed to government data, which releases country-wide data less frequently. CMIE conducts monthly surveys of more than 44,000 households in urban and rural IndiaIn August, the Indian Express cited a report released by Lokniti-CSDS, saying that 36% of Indians aged 15 to 34 thought that unemployment was the biggest problem facing the country.When compared to a similar survey conducted in 2016, the proportion of Indians who identified unemployment as the biggest problem increased by 18 percentage points, it said.Also read: Three Claims of Government Economists About Jobs Put to the TestQuality of jobsIndia’s workforce is not rising in relation to its increasing working-age population, CMIE chief Mahesh Vyas told The Wire in May.He said that only 40% of people aged 15 years and above offer themselves for work. The rest 60% are dependents.Vyas said that the quality of jobs in India is very low. “Most jobs pay poorly and are of informal arrangements in the unorganised sectors,” he added.If we take into account what economist Ajitava Roychowdhury had said, then India’s unemployment rate will be much higher.In May 2022, he quoted the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to say that only those who are doing “decent” jobs should be marked as employed. “Decent work sums up the aspirations of people in their working lives,” the professor of economics at Jadavpur University had told news agency PTI.Watch | ‘GDP Data Misleads, Hides Distress of Millions; India Must Focus on Income Growth, Jobs’More people are opting for self-employment over salaried jobsMoreover, it’s important to note that as per the latest PLFS survey, a larger number of individuals are self-employed than those in casual labour and the regular salaried class, The Wire reported in OctoberIn urban areas, a relatively higher number of people have salaried jobs as opposed to self-employment, the report said.In the PLFS report, within the self-employed category, two sub-categories have been established, which include: (i) own account workers and employers, and (ii) unpaid helpers in household enterprises.“So [the] employer [category] is barely under 2% of the number of people in the economy. In other words, the own account workers’ category is highly driven by people such as cultivators, weavers, potters, who work on their own, in rural areas. And in urban areas, they are the rediwallahs, thelewallahs, kabaadi, barbers, tailors, vendors, and those who work on the street. The share of self-employed [people] in the total workforce is increasing, and within that, most of the increase can be seen among unpaid family labour and own account workers,” Santosh Mehrotra, professor of economics, Centre for Informal Sector and Labour Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, had told The Wire.Unpaid labour – which is categorised as ‘helper in household enterprise’ within self-employment – has increased to 18.3% in 2022-23 from 17.5% in 2021-22 and 17.3% in 2020-21.He further explained that people are choosing to be self-employed, because of a lack of good work and wages. For example, an educated person would not want to do casual labour jobs.