Data leak of unemployment figures serious: Govt

The Centre on Thursday informed Rajya Sabha that there has been a data leak of unemployment figures before officially released by the government and efforts were being made to ascertain who was behind it.

Replying to queries during Question Hour, Minister of State for Planning and Statistics Rao Inderjit Singh said, "It is right that there was a data leak. Our survey result was to come out on May 30, 2019, but before that, the data was leaked. We have taken this very seriously. Maybe someone has an agenda behind it and the data was leaked. We are making efforts to ascertain who was behind the leak."

The Minister also said that the government has changed the methodology for ascertaining unemployment rates as a periodic survey. The survey is now being held every year based on quarterly data, against the five-year surveys earlier.

"The new method now is a yearly method taking into account quarterly surveys. The only comparability that can happen is when the next year data comes. At present, it was compared to 6.1% and the yearly data cannot be compared with the 5-year figure," he said.

To another question, the Minister said the government has been taking a number of steps to alleviate the unemployment.