Vivek Gupta 
Chandigarh: With voting for the Haryana assembly polls less than three weeks away, unemployment has emerged among the key issues of the election, giving a tough time to the ruling BJP.
There are several indicators in periodic government reports, private labour force data and overall trends in the job market that have got opposition parties, especially the Congress, convinced that raising the issue of unemployment ahead of the October 5 polls could help them throttle the ruling dispensation.
A post-poll survey by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS)’s Lokniti election watch program also cited unemployment as a major issue during the recent Lok Sabha polls in Haryana, where the BJP lost half its seats to the Congress.
While opposition and ruling party leaders continue to trade barbs on unemployment, the fact is that unemployment has been a persistent issue in the state for the last few years, shows data from the periodic labour force surveys released by the Union statistics ministry every quarter.
As per PLFS data, Haryana’s overall urban unemployment rate for those aged 15 to 29 was well above the national average for as many as six quarters – that is, between January-March 2022 and April-June 2023, touching a high of 29.9% in October-December 2022.
The state unemployment rate began to dip starting in the April-June 2023 quarter, but has gone upwards since the January-March quarter this year.
For instance, Haryana’s latest unemployment figure of 11.2% for the April-June quarter this year was well above the 9.5% recorded in the January-March quarter and the 8.3% recorded in October-December 2023.
Haryana’s labour force participation rate, which takes into account those working as well as willing to work and actively looking for a job, has hovered in the 35%-40% range between the April-June quarters of 2023 and 2024.
Women, who comprise almost half the state’s electorate, have fared worse in terms of unemployment.
The unemployment rate for urban women aged 15 to 29 was higher than the national average, often by ten or more percentage points, between the January-March 2022 quarter and the April-June 2023 quarter.
It dipped by nearly 17 percentage points to go below the national average in the July-September 2023 quarter and has stayed below the national average since then, although it has been increasing in value since January-March 2024.
Haryana’s unemployment numbers were even worse as per data released by the Centre For Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), which said Haryana had India’s highest unemployment rate in December 2022 at 37.4%.
Congress leader and former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda repeatedly quoted CMIE data to target the BJP government on unemployment.
Last week, he claimed that unemployment was the biggest issue in the state. He said the situation was so bad that graduate and post-graduate youth were ready to work as sweepers.
Hooda was citing recent Haryana government data that reportedly said around 46,012 graduate and post-graduate youth applied to work as sweepers hired by the Haryana Kaushal Rozgar Nigam.
The BJP under incumbent chief minister Nayab Singh Saini has been dismissing the Congress’s charge as mere poll rhetoric and claimed that its regime provided government jobs to 1.5 lakh people without taking bribes in its two successive terms in power.
Amid these claims and counterclaims, the impact of unemployment on the upcoming polls cannot be overlooked.
Jyoti Mishra, research associate at Lokniti-CSDS, told The Wire that unemployment is set to play a pivotal role in shaping the outcome of the assembly elections.
She is of the view that dissatisfaction among voters, particularly the youth, over the lack of adequate job opportunities could drive a shift in support away from the ruling party.
Aware of this, the BJP has focused its electoral campaign on employment generation, assuring voters – especially the youth – that jobs will be provided without “kharchi and parchi” (bribes and favouritism), Mishra added.
According to her, unemployment also emerged as a critical issue in Haryana during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. A post-poll survey conducted by Lokniti-CSDS revealed that 26% of voters expressed dissatisfaction with the government’s inability to generate jobs.
Mishra also said inflation followed closely as a significant concern, with 21% of voters criticising the government’s handling of rising prices.
“Furthermore, two out of five voters (40%) were unwilling to give the BJP-led NDA government another term, primarily due to the unemployment crisis, she continued to say.