Mumbai has a vast array of different industries. However, textiles are
still Mumbai's largest industry. Some of the other industries that Mumbai
has include: Pharmecuticals, construction, engineering, metals, silks, glassware,
printing, plastics, bikes and film. It also has a large petroleum industry.
Nearly all of India's petroleum is marketed in Mumbai.
Mumbai experienced the majority of its growth in industry after World War II. Up until that point it had relied mainly on the textile industry, with little other industrial growth occurring. After World War II, came Indian Independence and with that Mumbai's economy was inter meshed with the national Indian economy. More emphasis was put in internal trade; a vast change since previously Mumbai had been focused on foreign trade due to British control. Because of the strong British presence, Mumbai was the first Indian city to experience growth and changes associated with capitalism and have since become India's banking and finance capital.
Today Mumbai accounts for 20% of India's total employment in industry and 11% of India's employment in total. It handles 30% of India's exports and imports and is the subcontinent's largest port. However, there is still an extremely high rate of unemployment due to the fact that there are severely less jobs than there are workers.
The high rate of unemployment is due to a couple of factors. Firstly, the strong economics attracted migrants to the city with dreams of better opportunities. Secondly, many young people have come from the country to attend school in Mumbai. Once they complete their schooling they do not want to return home and because of the shortage of jobs in Mumbai they become one of the statistics. Also there has been no great change in the occupational structure in the past 20 years and many factories are moving to rural areas in order to spur growth there. All of these factors have left Mumbai with disproportionate ratio of jobs to workers. It has seen such rapid industrialization and enormous mass migration. This has also caused problems for Urban Developers because they cannot do much long term planning due to the fact that the city is always changing.
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