Best of BS Opinion: Labour data, judicial ethics, and Trump's trade moves

Here are the best of Business Standard's opinion pieces for today

India’s employment data is finally catching up with its complex labour market, notes our first editorial. The National Statistics Office released its first monthly bulletin under the revamped Periodic Labour Force Survey, offering a timely glimpse into the country’s jobs landscape. Using a new methodology that includes current weekly status indicators, the April figures show an unemployment rate of 5.1 per cent for those aged 15 and above — 6.5 per cent in urban areas and 4.5 per cent in rural regions. But the numbers also lay bare long-standing issues: female participation in urban areas is a worrying 25.7 per cent, and the 15–29 age group has a labour force participation rate of just 41.2 per cent.  

Judicial ethics, too, are in the spotlight as outgoing Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna and incoming Chief Justice B R Gavai pledged to not accept post-retirement assignments. The move is seen as a critique of the increasingly common practice of retired judges and bureaucrats entering government or private roles soon after stepping down, highlights our second editorial. While civil servants face a mandatory “cooling off” period, recently reduced from two years to one, this doesn’t apply to government posts. Past exceptions, such as Ashok Jha joining Hyundai India and S Jaishankar joining Tata Sons within months of retirement, raise questions about conflicts of interest. 

Debashis Basu writes how Donald Trump’s renewed push to force companies like Apple to move manufacturing back to the US has rattled global supply chains. Despite Apple producing 40 million iPhones in India and planning to double output, Trump’s pressure could derail its plans. Yet, the US lacks the skilled labour and infrastructure to reshore production quickly or efficiently. 

Meanwhile, Mihir S Sharma notes that Trump’s tariff pauses and partial rollbacks show that economic pressures may be taming his trade aggression. But global decoupling remains more a political slogan than a workable strategy. 

Finally, Patrick McGee’s Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company, reviewed by Hannah Beech, explores how Apple’s marriage to China powered both its rise and Beijing’s tech dominance, creating interdependence that now looks increasingly precarious. 

Stay tuned!