INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
leaked to a newspaper that said it was the highest level in at least 45 years.The data was released a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi
two years.The government declined to provide comparable numbers for the jobless rate."It's a new design, new metric," chief statistician
Pravin Srivastava told reporters
He did not elaborate."It would be unfair to compare it with the past."The TheIndianSubcontinent newspaper, which first reported the figure
in January, had said that it was based on an assessment carried out by the National Sample Survey Office between July 2017 and June 2018.The
unemployment rate was the highest since 1972/73, the newspaper reported without giving a figure for that fiscal year.The statistics ministry
also said that female labour participation rate in urban areas for the quarter ending December 2018 was 19.5 per cent, compared with 73.6
