There were 86 million salaried jobs in India during 2019-2020. In August 2020, their count was down to 65 million. The deficit of 21 million jobs is the biggest among all types of employment, points out Mahesh Vyas.

'The 20 to 24 age group accounted for 35% of job losses till July.' 'The 25 to 29 age bracket account for 46% of all job losses,' reveals Mahesh Vyas.

'Loss of these urban salaried jobs is, therefore, likely to have a particularly debilitating impact on the economy, besides causing immediate hardship to middle-class households,' points out Mahesh Vyas.

While salaried jobs are not lost easily, once lost they are also far more difficult to retrieve. Therefore, their ballooning numbers are a source of worry, notes Mahesh Vyas.

The recovery momentum could be petering out well before the recovery is complete, notes Mahesh Vyas.

While the lockdown hit employment in all age groups, it hit the employment of youngsters who are less than 29 years of age much more. The lockdown also hit women more than it has affected men, reveals Mahesh Vyas.

The employment that is returning is mostly essential services required by Indian households. Most urban Indian households cannot function without a retinue of maids, cooks, drivers, cleaners, notes Mahesh Vyas.

'Usually, urban wage rates are 50 per cent higher than rural wage rates. But, this could be narrowing very rapidly now,' points out Mahesh Vyas, CEO, Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy.

'People are getting back to work.' 'The worst seems to be over.' 'It is very likely that the recovery is mostly among the informal, self-employed, workers who cannot afford to be away from work for too long,' notes Mahesh Vyas.

'Over 27 million youngsters in their 20s lost their jobs in April.' '33 million men and women in their 30s lost jobs in April,' points out Mahesh Vyas.

'The economic impact of this lockdown is evidently huge.' 'Its impact on the livelihood of vulnerable sections of the society is immeasurably bigger,' observes Mahesh Vyas.

'The impact of economic shocks on the labour markets is usually on the young who delay their entry in response to a fall in job opportunities,' says Mahesh Vyas.

'Wage earners are shrinking. In both, the organised and unorganised sectors. And, entrepreneurs are growing.' 'But the increase in entrepreneurship is of a kind that does not create salaried employment or daily wage employment,' says Mahesh Vyas.

Neither the CAA nor the proposed NRC are important enough to stake the well-being of so many or stake economic growth. Getting growth back on track is more important, notes Mahesh Vyas.

'The large scale and widespread shrinking of the labour force in November, the peaking of unemployment in October and the fall in lead indicators in October and November point towards a worsening of the slowdown of the Indian economy in the third quarter of 2019-20,' says Mahesh Vyas.

'The high unemployment rate being witnessed today is not only the highest in three years but is far more debilitating for the economy than the similar unemployment rates witnessed in 2016,' says Mahesh Vyas.

'The 5.3% growth in wages per employee is the lowest growth in nine years,' points out Mahesh Vyas.

Users of employment / unemployment statistics can enjoy the benefits of -- initially the speed of private enterprise and then, the stamp of official statistics with a hopefully small time lag, says Mahesh Vyas.

It keeps getting harder every day for the government to drive its narrative that ample jobs are being created. They sound increasingly silly as they try to defend the indefensible, says Mahesh Vyas.

The BJP needs to worry about the kinds of professions it has landed up glorifying -- chai vendors, pakora vendors and now guards. These are not professions that any one of its voters would like to cherish, points out Mahesh Vyas.

It's high time we now turn the popular question on its head -- when there is no growth in jobs for several years, how can the real GDP grow at 7 per cent per annum, says Mahesh Vyas.

Rural and urban regions present different labour participation and employment levels. These differences also are not tuned to India exploiting its demographic dividend, says Mahesh Vyas.

If everyone had decent meaningful jobs, the rally maidans would be largely empty and, save for the Akhara babas and curious foreigners and the devout senior citizens, not very many would spare time for the Kumbh Mela, says Mahesh Vyas.

The 30-day moving average of the unemployment rate had climbed up much ahead by January 6, to 7.8%, says Mahesh Vyas.

The key to job creation is to increase labour participation - draw more people into the labour force and to provide them formal jobs in the organised sectors. Self-employment is not job creation, says, Mahesh Vyas.

Can 3 crore out of the 8.9 crore young male population of the nine states set off on a pilgrimage that extends for about a month? If yes, then what can we infer regarding the state of the young working population in these states, asks Mahesh Vyas.

The independent institute advising the PM on jobs seems to have missed the point that the challenge is to create net additional jobs, says Mahesh Vyas.

The labour force fell from 43.97 crore in 2016-17 to 42.61 crore in 2017-18

'If the 7 million estimate is true, then either our understanding of the past was all wrong or the economy has changed dramatically but so surreptitiously that we did not even notice it,' says Mahesh Vyas.

The Union Budget seems to have elicited a starkly opposite view from rural India compared to urbanites, says Mahesh Vyas.

Hopefully, the small recovery in the labour force and employment seen in the September-December 2017 wave will gather momentum in the coming waves, says Mahesh Vyas.The challenge, says Mahesh Vyas, is to find the corresponding jobs for these aspirants.

More people felt optimistic about their economic condition in November than in the same month a year ago, says Mahesh Vyas.

'In India, a large proportion of the labour force does not have a regular job.' 'People are mostly employed as daily wage workers, agricultural labourers, small farmers and self-employed traders.' 'These move in and out of "jobs" fairly rapidly.' 'It is the high proportion of these workers in India that makes unemployment volatile,' explains Mahesh Vyas.

There is an attempt to brush aside the results of all surveys that point to a deteriorating jobs situation. This is counter-productive, says Mahesh Vyas.

There is an attempt to brush aside the results of all surveys that point to a deteriorating jobs situation. This is counter-productive, says Mahesh Vyas.

Rising unemployment rate reflects a rise in the labour participation rate, which in India's case has been worryingly low.

'Of the 9.5 million unemployed who stopped looking for jobs, nearly seven million were young.' 'Is it possible that the young decided to continue with studies rather than look for jobs?' asks Mahesh Vyas.

As of the week ended July 2017, the unemployment rate was 3.1 per cent. This is the lowest unemployment rate recorded. Rural unemployment was also very low at 2.8 per cent.

It is necessary that at least three million additional jobs (if not more) are created every year to ensure that there isn't an increase in the stock of unemployed, says Mahesh Vyas.

Violence is just too stark, too TRP friendly and so it gets a lot of attention in the media. But the crime of discrimination is much worse because it is much greater, it attracts no attention and it has no recourse, says Mahesh Vyas.