Forbes India
Unemployment among India’s young women hit a high in April, with the jobless rate for women aged 15 to 29 years rising to 18.7 percent, government data shows. This was well above the 17.7 percent recorded in the previous month and more than thrice the 5.4 percent rate recorded overall for women of all ages.window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}});For the same age cohort, the male unemployment rate stood at 14.1 percent in April, marginally lower than March’s 14.3 percent, leaving a gap of 4.6 percentage points between male and female youth joblessness, the widest in the last five months.Also Read: Urban Joblessness Falls to One-Year Low, Rural Unemployment ClimbsFor young women in rural areas, the unemployment rate was 16.2 percent in April compared to 14.8 percent in the month before. In urban areas, the rate of joblessness for them was higher at 24.5 percent in April.Meanwhile, unemployment rates for young men in rural India was 13.3 percent while that for urban men was 15.9 percent in April.Overall youth unemployment, for both sexes in the 15 to 29 age bracket, edged up to 15.3 percent in April from 15.2 percent in March, continuing a trend of slow but steady increase since December 2025.The data also reflects a broader softening in labour market participation. The labour force participation rate (LFPR) for women aged 15 to 29 years slipped to 21.9 percent in April across rural and urban areas combined, down from 22.3 percent in the previous month. The LFPR for men in the same month was 60.4, marginally lower than the 60.9 percent in March. Overall, youth LFPR declined to 41.2 percent from 41.6 percent in the same period. Meanwhile, LFPR for all age groups was 41.6 percent in April compared to 41.9 percent in March.
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