Educated youth have been hit harder by unemployment. The share of youth in the population in 2021 was only 27 percent, which is expected to reduce to 23 percent by 2036.
‘देश में 83 फीसदी युवा आबादी (पढ़े-लिखे लोग ज़्यादा) बेरोजगार’, ILO ने जारी किए आंकड़ें
The International Labor Organization (ILO) and the Institute for Human Development (IHD) jointly released data today, which also included India’s Employment Report 2024. According to this report, in the year 2022, India’s total unemployed population was 83%. Please note that Chief Economic Advisor (CEA) V Ananth Nageswaran released the report on Tuesday.
Unemployment spread rapidly among educated people
According to this report, the share of educated youth among all unemployed people was 54.2% in the year 2000, which has increased to 65.7% in 2022. Furthermore, among currently educated but unemployed youth, there are more females (76.7%) than males (62.2%). The report further said, “This shows that the problem of unemployment in India has become increasingly acute among the youth, especially the educated people in urban areas.”
Researchers also found that youth employment and underemployment increased from 2000 to 2019, but declined during the years of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2000, half of the total employed youth population was self-employed, 13% had regular jobs, while the remaining 37% had casual jobs. The corresponding figures for 2012, 2019 and 2022 were 46%, 21%, 33%; 42%, 32%, 26%; And are 47%, 28%, 25% respectively.
70-80 lakh youth will join in the next decade
The study further states that India will add 7-8 million (70-80 lakh) youth to its labor workforce during the next decade, and suggests 5 key policy sectors going forward: 1. Promoting employment generation; 2. Improvement in the quality of employment; 3. Addressing inequalities in the labor market; 4. Strengthening both active labor market skills and policies; 5. To bridge the knowledge gap on labor market patterns and youth employment.
Government cannot interfere in everything’
Releasing the report, CEA Nageswaran said it was ‘not correct’ to think that the government should intervene for ‘every social or economic problem’. “We need to get out of this mentality. In the normal world, this is a commercial sector, and people who want benefits need to be recruited”.
Opposition attacked the government
Many opposition leaders, including Congress National President Mallikarjun Kharge, attacked the Modi government over the report. Mallikarjun Kharge wrote on X that our youth are bearing the brunt of the pathetic apathy of the Modi government, as ever-increasing unemployment has ruined their future. The ILO and IHD reports conclusively say that the problem of unemployment in India is serious. They are conservative, we are sitting on a ‘ticking bomb’ of unemployment!
But the Chief Economic Advisor of the Modi government defends the Dear Leader by saying that “the government cannot solve all social, economic problems like unemployment”, Kharge further said. Kharge further cited the report and wrote that 83% of unemployed Indians are youth. Also, only 17.5% youth in rural areas are engaged in regular work. The share of people employed in industry and manufacturing has remained at 26% of the total workforce since 2012 and the percentage of youth engaged in economic activities has declined from 42% in 2012 to 37% by 2022. Therefore, fewer youth are now involved in economic activities than under the Congress-UPA government due to the huge shortage of jobs under the Modi government. At the same time, youth unemployment has tripled under the Modi government as compared to 2012.
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