Unemployment refers to a situation when a person is without a job (an activity undertaken in return for an income in cash or kind) and is looking for one.
Types of Unemployment

• Open Unemployment: The labourers do not find a work to do. Unskilled labour unemployment is included in this category of unemployment.
• Educated Unemployment: Even an educated or skilled person fails to get suitable employment. This is one of the major problems for developing countries like India.

Seasonal Unemployment: This arises because demand for labour changes with seasons and workers get employment only in the peak season like harvesting and sowing seasons in agriculture.

Frictional Unemployment: The unemployment results due to changes in demand and supply conditions in the market. It results when workers are shifting over from one job to another.

Voluntary Unemployment: There are jobs and people are not ready to take job at the prevailing wage rate. This generally exists in advanced countries at large.

Involuntary Unemployment: This type of unemployment exists in developing countries, in which people want to do job, but they do not get the job.

In view of the diversity in the forms of unemployment it has been found that no single measure can adequately capture the magnitude of unemployment in India. In addition to the decadal Census figures, the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) conducts more detailed sample surveys every five years on employment and unemployment.

The NSSO uses three different tests to measure the % of employment :

1. Usual Status(US) concept, which has a reference period of one year and classifies a person as employed or unemployed on the basis of his activity for the major part of the year.
2. Current Weekly Status(CWS) includes a person if he has not worked even for one hour during the week, though available for work.
3. Current Daily Status (CDS) measures all the days of employment/unemployment as well as underemployment during the week.

Chronic unemployment can be measured by US and CWS data. However, for policy formation, all the three sets of data are used in conjunction. It is belived that the CDS data gives more realistic estimate.

Poverty according to the Human Development Report is the denial of opportunities to lead a long, healthy, creative life and enjoy a decent standard of living, freedom, dignity, self-respect and respect of others.

One of the first attempt to define and measure poverty was done by the working group of the Planning Commission which defined poverty in terms of minimum level of living .

The amounts required to buy the minimum calorific requirements is quantified in terms of money. It is fixed as 2250 calories for urban and 2500 calories for rural people.

Inflation is an economy-wide increase in the general level of prices. Changes in price levels are measured by the following :
Wholesale Price Index, Consumer Price Index, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Deflator.
Wholesale Price Index
WPI is a weighted average of indices covering 447 commodities which are traded in primary, manufacturing and fuel and
power sectors. A revived WPI with 2004-05 as the base year is being worked out.
Consumer Price Index
CPI is the retail price average of a basket of goods and services directly consumed by the people.
GDP Deflator
This is arrived at by dividing GDP at current prices by GDP at constant prices in terms of base year prices (i.e 2004-05).

• Poverty alleviation was explicitly adopted as one of the main objectives of economic planning in the 5th plan and in the seventies a number of special programmes for rural poor were undertaken like Small Farmers Development Agency (SFDA), Food for Work Programme, Drought Prone Area Programme (DPAP), Marginal Farmers and Agricultural Labourers Development Awergency (MFAL) etc.
• In the later phase comprehensive programmes for increasing employment and reducing poverty like Integrated Rural Development Programme (1978-79), National Rural Employment Programme (1980), Rural Landless Employment Guarantee Programme (1983), TRYSEM (1979) etc., were started. NREP, RLEGP and Jawaharlal Nehru Rozgar Yojana were combined in April 1989 to form Jawahar Rozgar Yojana (JRY) for rural employment.
• In April 1999, JRY was restructured to form Jawahar Gram Samridhi Yojana with 75:25 cost sharing between centre and state.

• NREP was started in 1980 and was continued under the seventh plan.
• It was meant to help that segment of rural population which largely depends on wage employment and has virtually no source of income during the lean agricultural period.
• Its financial burden was shared between Central and State Governments on 50:50.
• On April 1, 1989 it was merged into the Jawahar Rozgar Yojana.

• RLEGP was started in August 1983, with the objective of expanding employment opportunities for the rural landless.
• The programme aimed at providing guarantee of employment to atleast one member of the landless household for about 100 days in a year.
• Though the programme was to be fully financed by the Central Government, the implementation of the programme was entrusted to the states.
• On April 1, 1989 it was merged into the Jawahar Rozgar Yojana.

• IRDP launched in 1978-79 and extended all over the country in 1980-81 was essentially conceived as an anti-poverty programme under the 6th plan.
• Through a programme of asset endowment it would provide self-employment in a variety of activities in the Primary, Secondary and the Tertiary sector. It aimed at endowing the poor with productive assests or skills so that they can employ themselves usefully to earn greater incomes and thus cross the poverty line.
• Most studies in respect of the IRDP noted various limitations of the programme. Wrong identification of the families, outright leakages through corruption and malpractices were identified as the major weaknesses.


• With effect from April, 1999 it was merged into the Swama Jayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana.

• In February 1989, the government announced a new wage employment scheme, the Jawaharlal Nehru Rozgar Yojana for intensive employment creation in 120 backward districts.
• Later on, however, it was felt that there was no need to have separate NREP, RLEGP and Jawahar Lal Nehru Rozgar Yojana. These wage employment programmes were merged into a single rural employment programme on April 1, 1989 and was called Jawahar Rozgar Yojana.
• It was administered by village panchayats and was specially targeted to help people below the poverty line.


• With effect from April 1999 JRY has been restructured and streamlined and it has been renamed as Jawahar Gram Samridhi Yojana.

• TRYSEM was initiated in 1979 with the objective of tackling unemployments problem among the rural youth.
• It aimed at training about 2 lakh rural youths every year to enable them it to become self-employed.
• Under this scheme 40 youths were to be selected from each block and for being eligible for selection the person should belong to a rural family having an income of less than Rs. 3500 per year.


• With effect from April, 1999 TRYSEM was merged into Swama Jayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana.

• Prime Ministers Rozgar Yojana for educated unemployed youth was introduced on 2nd October 1993.
• It was designed to provide self-employment to more than a million educated unemployed youth by setting up of seven lakh microenterprises under the 8th plan and it continues in the 9th plan.
• Under this scheme every selected educated unemployed youth in the age group of 18-35 years and having family income below Rs. 24,000 is provided a loan upto Rs. 1 lakh for opening his own enterprise.


• Five % of equity is to be invested by the beneficiary himself and the remaining cost of the project is financed by the concerned bank.

• NRY was launched on October, 1989 for creating employment opportunities for the urban poor.
• It consists of three sub-schemes: scheme of urban microenterprise, scheme of urban wage employment and scheme of housing and shelter upgradation.
• Its target was to provide employment to 10 lakh urban people every year, with one-third reserved for the women, and special attention was given to people of SCs and STs.


• Since December, 1997 NRY was merged with Swarna Jayanti Shahri Rozgar Yojana.

• EAS was introduced in October 1993. It aims at providing 100 days of unskilled manual work on demand to two members of a rural family in the age group of 18-60 years in the lean agricultural season to all the rural blocks of the country.
• So the primary objective of EAS is creation of additional wage employment opportunities for the rural poor during the period of acute shortage of wage employment and the secondary objective is creation of durable community, social and economic assets to sustain future employment and development.
• It is implemented as a centrally sponsored scheme on a cost sharing ratio of 75:25.


• With effect from April 1,2002 EAS and Jawahar Gram Samridhi Yojana would be fully integrated with the Sampoorna Grameen Rozgar Yojana.

• UBSP was started in 1990-91 with the objective to introduce absolute improvement in the lives of the people living in the slums.
• The government accepted it for the period of 8th plan.
• The expenditure made on this plan was shared by the Central and the State Governments in the ratio of 60:40.


• Since December, 1977 it was merged with Swarna Jayanti Shahri Rozgar Yojana.

• PMIUPEP was launched on November, 1995 with the objective to attack the several root causes of urban poverty simultaneously.
• Besides the objective of employment generation and skill development, the PMIUPEP also aims at effective achievements of social sector goals, community empowerment, environment improvement and shelter upgradation.
• The programme was applicable to all urban agglomerations with a population ranging between 50,000 and 1,00,000 as per census 1991, subject to condition that elections to local bodies have been held.


• Since Dec, 1997 this scheme has been merged with Swama Jayanti Shahri Rozgar Yojana.

This quiz has been prepared with questions related to Indian economy-Poverty and unemployment. These question were asked in various competitive exams across India. You can practice these questions to gain more knowledge.

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