AHMEDABAD: Gujarat has once again been rated as the top state for providing jobs through employment exchanges, according to the Employment Exchange Statistics-2013 (EES-2013).

State labour and employment minister Saurabh Patel announced in the assembly that according to the EES-2013 report, Gujarat has given 57.53% of the jobs provided through employment exchanges in the country. He said that of the 4.27 lakh jobs provided through employment exchanges all-India, 2.46 lakh were provided by Gujarat.

According to Patel, of the 67,800 women who were given jobs all-India, 34,100 were from Gujarat and the state’s share in giving employment to women was 50.29%.

The minister informed the assembly that in the SC category, 29,460 youths who had registered themselves got jobs in 2011 and of them 15,560 were from Gujarat.

In the reply to a question by Congress MLAs, the minister however said that there were still 7.54 unemployed youth in Gujarat. “This is only 1.96% of the total 4.47 crore unemployed youth in the country,” he said.

In the reply to a question over Vibrant Gujarat, Patel said the overall industrial production in the state had increased by 16% and also the exports in the state had gone up by 25%.

According to the report, the number of vacancies which were notified to the employment exchanges during 2012 were maximum in Gujarat (3.4 lakh), followed by Maharashtra (2 lakh), Tamil Nadu (0.35 lakh) Haryana (0.19 lakh) and Kerala (0.18 lakh).