Mumbai: India's unemployment rate witnessed a sharp decline to 6.57 percent in January, the lowest since March 2021, as the country gradually recovers with the easing of restrictions following a decline in Omicron cases, according to CMIE.

While unemployment in urban India stood at 8.16 percent in January, in rural areas, it was the lowest at 5.84 percent, as per data by the independent think-tank Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE).

In December, the unemployment rate stood at 7.91 percent, with urban at 9.30 percent and rural at 7.28 percent, it added.

Telangana reported the lowest unemployment rate at 0.7 percent in January, followed by Gujarat (1.2 percent), Meghalaya (1.5 percent), and Odisha (1.8 percent).

However, Haryana had the highest unemployment rate at 23.4 percent, followed by Rajasthan at 18.9 percent.

CMIE had estimated the number of unemployed in India as of December 2021 at 53 million, of which a huge proportion were women.

CMIE MD and CEO Mahesh Vyas, in his analysis of the December data, said 35 million people were actively looking for work in December 2021, of which 23 percent or 8 million were women.

An equally important challenge is to provide employment to the additional 17 million who were also not employed and were willing to work if work was available, although they were not actively looking for employment, Vyas added.