Page 3 - Mahesh Vyas

Consumer sentiments recovering in July

After having scaled up by 5% in February, the index of consumer sentiment's growth rate fell in March, April and May 2022. In May and June 2022, it was a meagre 1%

Retreat of female labour participation

About 34 per cent of people in the age group 20-24 years sought employment during the January-April 2022 period

Future imperfect

The gradual loss of momentum of growth in sentiments can be traced to the deterioration in consumer expectations from the future

Vulnerable jobs

While about 13 million lost jobs during the month, the count of the unemployed increased by only 3 million

Disparate and slow recovery of sentiments

Consumer sentiments have been recovering, but at a very slow pace. Worse still, this recovery has been decelerating in recent months. Further, this recovery is skewed in favour of the rich

Agni pareeksha

Agnipath promises to hire only about 46,000 people initially; this would be increased in subsequent years

Consumer sentiments uncertain

Consumer expectations in rural India were down by 1.7 per cent in May while expectations in urban India improved by 6.4 per cent

Employment gains

Employment increased from 402.9 million in April to 404 million in May

Sentiments sour

It is quite possible that the controls on export of wheat and sugar could have caused the sentiments in general and expectations in particular to sour in recent times

A robust industrial recovery

Employment among industrial workers increased further by about a million in the January-April 2022 Wave

From households to enterprises to markets, expectations drive decisions

Expectations play an important role in decision-making. Enterprises and the financial markets, for example, allocate funds that reflect their expectations

Bustling labour markets in April

The labour force increased by 8.8 million - from 428.4 million in March 2022 to 437.2 million in April 2022

Consumer sentiments rise slowly

Wounds of pandemic-induced lockdowns on households are healing

7.5% growth not enough

The divergence in real GDP growth and employment growth may continue into 2022-23, although it could be much smaller

Farmers are doing well

In 2022, India will record the fifth consecutive year of bumper wheat crop

Unemployment rate falls, from grace

The decline in the LPR reflects the inadequacy of the growth in employment opportunities

Consumer sentiment's recovery path

The problem is that this recovery is grossly inadequate and the rate of recovery is not only too slow but is also slowing down

Slicing the unemployed by class

In 2019-20, the poorest households accounted for 9.8% of all the households and only 3.2% of all the unemployed

Middle income surge in 2021-22

Consumer sentiments had fallen by 15.7 per cent between March and June 2021 - the period of the second wave of Covid-19. The recovery since June has more than covered that fall

High school graduates win jobs

Jobs held by graduates and post-graduates (graduates-plus) were increasing steadily till the pandemic