Skip to main content

Global unemployment, inequality during 1991-2019: What secondary data say

By IMPRI Team 

Addressing the issue of unemployment and inequality #IMPRI Center for Human Dignity and Development (CHDD), IMPRI Impact and Policy Research Institute, New Delhi, recently organized a talk on “Global Unemployment & Inequality during 1991-2019: Reflections from Secondary data” under the series The State of Development Discourses – #CohesiveDevelopment.
The speaker for the session was Prof Ranjit Singh Ghuman, Professor of Eminence, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar. The discussants included Dr G. Sridevi, Associate Professor, School of Economics, University of Hyderabad and Prof Vinoj Abraham, Professor, Centre for Development Studies (CDS), Thiruvananthapuram. Prof Sunil Ray, Former Director, A. N. Sinha Institute of Social Studies, Patna; Advisor, CDECS and IMPRI was the moderator for the event.
Prof Sunil Ray, Former Director, A. N. Sinha Institute of Social Studies, Patna; Advisor, CDECS and IMPRI began the discussion by emphasising on the need for re-construction for development. He praised Prof Ghuman’s paper on unemployment and highlighted the importance of this issue w.r.t to migrants, and unemployed people, especially in the informal sector. He also briefly discussed the course of studies in economic theory related to employment starting from the ‘Great Depression’ to Keynes to neo-classical economics and even Fredman’s work on the natural rate of unemployment.
He addressed the ‘Great Depression’ as the ‘Great Recession’. Commenting on the seriousness of the issue he stated that today farmers are agile tomorrow unemployed people would be on the roads and nobody can stop this.
Prof Ranjit Singh Ghuman, Professor of Eminence, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar started his discussion by stating the problem as global and a worldwide issue. He started with the hypothesis that growth, unemployment, and human development are closely knitted and there exists a correlation or multi-collinearity between them. He also stated the distribution of growth benefits as a development paradigm. Prof Ghuman caused the problem by one statement that the world has been experiencing growth over time but there is also ever-increasing inequality. He highlighted the complex issue of the working poor by stating that 77% of the people are living at Rs. 20 per day and mentioned the system getting exposed due to Covid-19.
Moving on to his paper on ‘Status of Unemployment: 1990-2019’ he mentioned the sources for data collection and classification of various countries according to income and per capita for unemployment and inequality respectively. He highlighted the fact that 2017 consumption data wasn’t published on time according to him this was due to hiding the aggregate demand shrinkages which link to ‘Keynes Equation’ where he talked about how lower PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) affects aggregate GDP.
Later he explained the unemployment scenario with various percentages and among multiple categories. Like the gender-wise unemployment ratio and no. of countries in each unemployment rate category. He also presented multiple figures for youth unemployment and the vulnerable and working poor category. He stated that growth rate and per capita don’t address vulnerability and talked about how the vulnerability is higher in upper-middle- and high-income countries.
Talking about inequality he stated that actual figures for countries would be much higher if we factor in multi-dimensional poverty along with income inequality. He questions neo-liberal as the solution for all types of unemployment, poverty, and inequality. He concludes by stating the need for sustainable development in the long run and poverty is a threat to prosperity. He ended by expressing the need to address hypercapitalism.

Technology and its Impact on Unemployment

Prof Vinoj Abraham, Professor, Centre for Development Studies (CDS), Thiruvananthapuram praised Prof Ghuman for his insightful research and expressed how his paper acts as a bird’s eye view of the problem. He started by saying the shift in mechanism for jobless growth by rapidly increasing technology. Compared to the situation in the 1990’s he highlighted how technology has changed and acts as a segregation parameter for the population into different segments.
Across countries, technology is playing an important role in the vulnerable or unemployment paradigm but in India, it may not replace people as technology usage is cost infusive. He highlighted the need to have reserved ages or any social security for people to fall back and get support. He addressed the need for technological intervention in workers’ welfare such as collective bargaining facilities. It is possible to for capital to use technology and build institutional mechanisms required for per-capita into areas of growth benefits.

Need to have access to equal opportunities

Dr G. Sridevi, Associate Professor, School of Economics, University of Hyderabad started the discussion by questioning whether growth alone can solve all problems. She states that economic inequality led to economic segregation or labour discrimination on the basis of gender, race, caste and religion. She highlighted that over years access to higher education has increased but still female labour force participation declined. Despite lower fertility rates and higher education, we still face lower female labour participation rates. According to Prof Sridevi, this could possibly be due to existing gender discrimination, social discrimination and more females involved in unpaid work.
She also suggested that this could be removed if we focus on equal opportunities and efficiency for the same position for both genders. Highlighting the Telangana situation with the lowest unemployment rate but the highest vulnerability she stated why certain groups thrive to remain vulnerable and why are we ignoring the majority. We can’t progress without addressing wealth inequality and the market can’t take care of everything, we need to have equal opportunities and access to all.

Conclusion

While concluding the discussion, Prof Sunil stated that the presence of ‘Power Central Relation’ is suffocating for the general public. There is a dire need to understand the sense of accountability in all aspects and especially youth unemployment. He also focused to address three main issues at the end i.e., firstly, we need to come out of our illusion of the presence of free markets, secondly empirical observations play important role in depicting the reality and cruciality of the problem and lastly through his working paper ‘Birth of an alternative development paradigm’ he presents solutions to address the problem.
---
Acknowledgement: Sunishtha Yadav, a research intern at IMPRI

Comments

TRENDING

Defeat of martial law: Has the decisive moment for change come in South Korea?

By Steven Lee  Late at night on December 3, soldiers stormed into South Korea’s National Assembly in armored vehicles and combat helicopters. Assembly staff desperately blocked their assault with fire extinguishers and barricades. South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol had just declared martial law to “ eliminate ‘anti-state’ forces .”

70,000 migrants, sold on Canadian dream, face uncertain future: Canada reinvents the xenophobic wheel

By Saurav Sarkar*  Bikram Singh is running out of time on his post-study work visa in Canada. Singh is one of about 70,000 migrants who were sold on the Canadian dream of eventually making the country their home but now face an uncertain future with their work permits set to expire by December 2024. They came from places like India, China, and the Philippines, and sold their land and belongings in their home countries, took out loans, or made other enormous commitments to get themselves to Canada.

A groundbreaking non-violent approach: Maharishi’s invincible defense technology

By MajGen (R) Kulwant Singh, Col (R) SP Bakshi, Col (R) Jitendra Jung Karki, LtCol (R) Gunter Chassé & Dr David Leffler*  In today’s turbulent world, achieving lasting peace and ensuring national security are more urgent than ever. Traditional defense methods focus on advanced weapons, military strategies, and tactics, but a groundbreaking approach offers a new non-violent and holistic solution: Maharishi’s Invincible Defense Technology (IDT). 

This Indian British Marxist blamed USSR's collapse in 1991 on Khrushchev's 'revisionism'

By Harsh Thakor*  Harpal Singh Brar, British Indian Marxist scholar and communist leader, has passed away in Chandigarh. He was 85. He was a lifelong supporter of socialism, Marxism, and the working class. He will be remembered among British Communists.

EVMs: Govt must prove beyond reasonable doubt it's upholding mandate for free, fair polls

By Jerald D’souza  With the growth of India’s population, concerns about electoral fraud associated with ballot papers, also began to escalate. In 1989, the People’s Representation Act was amended to enable EVMs to prevent electoral fraud. In 1998, EVMs made their debut during legislative assembly elections and for the first time for general elections in 2004. However, criticisms against the EVMs and questions about their integrity have been raised by political parties, civil society and the general population. On 2 February 2024, there was a noteworthy demonstration of dissent where numerous individuals, including Ambedkarite advocates, legal professionals, and other members of civil society  convened at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar demanding the prohibition of EVMs. In 2024, the Supreme court had slapped down a petition to return to paper ballots on the basis that machines give “absolutely accurate results” unless human bias maligns them. The court stated that it was open to testi...

Chalapathi's death in encounter suggests Maoists' inability to establish broader mass support

By Harsh Thakor* The Maoist movement experienced a significant loss during the Ramagudem encounter on January 21, with the death of Chalapathi (Pratap), a Central Committee member of the CPI (Maoist). His death, along with 15 others, marks a major setback for the movement. Reports suggest that his location was revealed to security forces through a selfie with his wife.

Why do we mostly resist and refrain from communicating on sanitation topic?

By Nikhil Kumar, Mansee Bal Bhargava* According to UN SDG Progress report (2022), at the present moment no targets for SDG 6 are expected to be met by 2030. In 2022, 2.2 billion people had no access to safe drinking water and 3.5 million lacked safe sanitation. Approximately 50% of the world’s population was reported to have been under resourced in enough water for part of the year and a quarter of that population was living under “extremely high” water stress. Add to it, droughts have affected over 1.4 billion people between 2002 and 2021.

Govt of India asked to work for release of 217 Indian fishermen detained in Pakistan since 2021

By A Representative  Members of the fishing communities from Gujarat and Diu, Union Territory, held a press conference in Ahmedabad, urging the Union Government to take proactive measures to secure the release of Indian fishermen currently detained in Pakistan. Presently, 217 Indian fishermen, mostly from Gujarat and Diu, are held in Pakistan’s Malir Jail. Of these, 53 have been incarcerated since 2021 and 130 since 2022.

34 Dalit families in IIT Kanpur without toilets in Open Defecation Free India

By Sandeep Pandey   When Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur was set up in 1959, two villages were uprooted. The farmers were given meagre compensation for the standing crop. No compensation was given for the land to build this institute of national importance. Each family was promised a job but what was not told to them was that one would require specialised skills to get a job at IIT. Some members of these families were, of course, absorbed for menial work. Some washerfolk families were also invited from outside to live on campus to take care of the laundry needs of students, staff and faculty members. One of these men was cajoled by IIT authorities then to forego a regular employment at IIT and instead take up clothes washing work.

अल्पसंख्यक कार्य मंत्रालय का बजट निराशाजनक: 19.3% अल्पसंख्यकों के लिए मात्र 0.0661% ठोस आवंटन

- मुजाहिद नफ़ीस*   1-2-2025 को भारत सरकार द्वारा संसद में वर्ष 2025-26 का बजट वित्त मंत्री निर्मला सीतारमण जी ने पेश किया| इस वर्ष का बजट 5065345 करोड़ है जो कि पिछले साल के संशोधित अनुमान से लगभग 7.39% की बढ़ोतरी हुई है| वहीं अल्पसंख्यक कार्य मंत्रालय का बजट मात्र 3350.00 करोड़ है जो कि कुल बजट का 0.0661% लगभग है|  पिछले साल 2024-25 में 3183.24 करोड़ था|