Coronavirus has led to an escalation in the unemployment rate of the world. According to International Labour organization (ILO) estimation, over 25 million jobs would be threatened due to spread of coronavirus globally.

In India, 27 million youth in the age group of 25-30 lost their jobs in April 2020. The unemployment rate in April 2020 was 23.5 per cent, which soared to 27.1 per cent in the week ended on May 3. Thereafter, the unemployment rate of 24.3 per cent was recorded in the week ended on May 24. This rate is higher than what was recorded in the previous week (24.0%), which has by and large remained stable since.

As per the available data, in April alone, about 18.2 million jobs of business persons were lost. Though 5.5 million jobs had also been recovered. On the other hand, salaried jobs declined from 68.4 million in April to 68.3 million in May 2020, even as the number of salaried jobs used to be 86 million in 2019-2020.

The rise in unemployment is reflected in various sectors and industries. For example, many media companies had to take steps like slashing the number of pages, salary cuts, and leave without payment.

The Times group, for instance, announced salary cuts. The Times group said there will be reduction between 5 to 10 per cent in salaries from April 1. NDTV also announced salary cuts between 10 and 40 per cent from April 1 for three months. Even News Nation terminated 16 English digital employees.

Magazines like Outlook stopped print publication. Its Editor-in-chief Ruben Banerjee announced on 30 March about the temporary suspension of print publication.

Moreover, even the Aviation Industry experienced a loss of around 20 lakh jobs, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA). Similarly, the Travel and Tourism Industry could experience a loss about 2 crore jobs.

Perhaps the unemployment rate will gradually reduce in the future, as we go on the road to economic recovery from the current crisis due to.