Rural–Urban Disparities in Female Youth Unemployment in Northeast India: Evidence from PLFS, 2017–18 to 2023–24
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.68050/JAMS.2026.333Keywords:
Female youth unemployment; Rural–urban disparity; Northeast India; PLFS; Labour market; Female employmentAbstract
Unemployment among female youth remains an important labour-market concern in Northeast India, with considerable differences between rural and urban areas. This paper examines rural–urban disparities in female youth unemployment across the eight Northeastern states using published Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data from 2017–18 to 2023–24. The methods adopted in the study are descriptive and also comparative analysis has been done to examine interstate and temporal variations. Further, a paired-sample t-test to assess the statistical significance of rural–urban differences. The study found that unemployment rate among female youth on average was higher in urban areas (35.99 per cent) than in rural areas (21.83 per cent), with an average difference of 14.16 percentage points. This difference is statistically significant (t = 8.36, p < 0.001). moreover, a considerable interstate variation is also observed, with Meghalaya recording the largest average rural–urban gap and Manipur is the lowest. The findings suggest that female youth unemployment in Northeast India varies considerably across locations and states, highlighting the need to consider state-specific and rural–urban labour-market conditions in employment strategies.
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