While the nationwide lockdown is yet to accomplish the mission of curbing the spread of the Coronavirus, it has already started paying off with more damages to the economical and employment corridors in India as the nationwide unemployment rate surged unprecedently due to the adverse effect of the lockdown, which ceased the industrial operations and suspended the transportation channels. 

The unprecedented surge has been the sequel of the unprecedented experiment and the absence of the trajectory to balance the health and economic crisis. The data released by the Center for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) has revealed the prevailing grounds amid the outbreak. According to the data, India's unemployment rate surged to 27.11 percent for the week ended May 3.

It stood at 6.74 percent in the week ended March 15, before the Central government imposed the nationwide lockdown. The rate has been tripled in a short period alarming the government to act upon providing antidotes to the ailing economy. CMIE is the Mumbai based think tank and the study has found that the urban areas have more unemployment than the rural regions.

The urban areas across the country house more red zones due to COVID-19 cases and these areas have reported 29.22 percent of unemployment rate while the rural areas have accounted for 26.16 percent. Urban areas had 21.45 percent of unemployment for the week ended April 26 and the rural unemployment rate stood at 20.88 percent in the same period. 

According to the think tank, the monthly unemployment rate in April stood at 23.52 percent while March reported 8.74 percent. The think tank has also listed out the states that reported more unemployment as of April end. The data has shown Puducherry has the highest unemployment at 75.8 percent, followed by Tamil Nadu 49.8 percent. Jharkhand stands at third place with 47.1 percent and Bihar is at the fourth spot by reporting 46.6 percent.

The states like Haryana, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, and Maharashtra fell back in the list with 43.2 percent, 29.8 percent, 21.5 percent, and 20.9 percent respectively. The hilly states had reported the lowest unemployment rates during the same period. Himachal Pradesh reported 2.2 percent, Sikkim has 2.3 percent while Uttarkhand has reported 6.5 percent.  

The data of the think tank has highlighted the sharpest rise in the unemployment rate amid the sharpest rise in COVID- 19 cases since the outbreak reported in India. The experts and economists have predicted that the country's GDP would witness a decline for this financial year and the employment in the unorganized sector and MSMEs would hit hard.

The Central government has announced Rs 1.70 lakh crore fiscal stimulus so far to ease the income and economic instability which enormously burdening the daily wage and low-income people. The government has poured some relaxations on the restrictions in some zones which have reported a lower number of infections. However, it has signaled that the nationwide lockdown would be revoked beyond May 17.  The current unemployment rate shows that 122 million have lost their jobs in the wake of the lockdown of which 91.3 million were small traders and laborers. 17.8 million salaried workers and 18.2 million self-employed people have lost their jobs.