Poor Job Market for women in Jammu and Kashmir

• Jammu and Kashmir’s urban female unemployment rate of 53.6% is the highest in the country, with over 50% of young urban women unable to find any jobs.

• The unemployment rate is more than 30 percentage points higher than the national average in this category (21%).

• The Union Territory’s female urban labour force participation rate (LFPR) among youth aged 15-29 at 30.2% was second only to Himachal Pradesh (34.9%) in the same quarter.

• The lack of job opportunities and jobs in the services and manufacturing sectors that do not match their skill set or fail to offer sustainable wages are driving women back into agriculture.

• The share of urban women employed in agriculture has more than doubled from 13.2% in July-September 2018 to 27.6% in the same quarter in 2024.

• The government has introduced schemes such as Hausla, Umeed, and Tejaswini to provide financial assistance to address the issue of unemployment, predominantly for women.

• Mariam, an Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, University of Kashmir, believes that the government needs to come up with “policies that trigger self-sustained agglomeration economies” in the region to address persistently high rates of unemployment.