The Covid-19 pandemic has been hard on everyone around the globe. However, the lockdown has affected people working for salary much harder.
According to a report by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, nearly five million salaried people lost their jobs in July. While 18.9 million salaried jobs have been lost since the beginning of the lockdown.
CMIE’s data showed that 17.7 million salaried jobs were lost in April. An additional 0.1 million jobs were lost in May. However, 3.9 million jobs were gained in June. But, 5 million jobs were lost in July.
While in April, 30 per cent of the employed persons had lost their employment, by July less than 3 per cent were bereft of their source of livelihood. While the magnitude of this loss pales in front of the big loss of April, at 11 million, it is still a significant setback.
The data also showed that job losses in the manufacturing sector were the worst. Within manufacturing, textile was the most severely hit. The employment losses in the manufacturing sector resulted in a lower wage bill. In the textile sector, in particular, the wage bill fell by 29%. A similar trend was witnessed in leather, which recorded over 22% fall in its wage bill in June quarter.
While salaried jobs are not lost easily, once lost, they are hard to retrieve. Thus, being a cause of worry.