42% graduates under 25 years remained jobless post-covid

As many as 42% of graduates under the age of 25 remained unemployed after the covid-19 pandemic, while the pace of job creation decreased following the global economic slowdown, a report on the labour market released on Wednesday said.

The report, ‘State of Working India 2023: Social Identities and Labour Market Outcomes’ by Bengaluru-based Azim Premji University, said that a large variation in the rate of unemployment exists even among people with higher education, though post-covid figures remain below the pre-covid levels.

It cited data from the Periodic Labour Force Survey (2021-22), which is carried out by the National Statistical Office (NSO).

“The unemployment rate falls from over 40% for educated youth under 25 years of age to less than 5% for graduates who are 35 years and above,” the report said.

“This indicates that eventually graduates do find jobs but the key questions are, what is the nature of jobs they find and do these match their skills and aspirations,” it added.

The report said the connection between India’s economic growth and increase in good jobs remains weak.

“Since the 1990s year-on-year non-farm GDP growth and non-farm employment growth are uncorrelated with each other suggesting that policies promoting faster growth need not promote faster job creation,” the report said.

“However, between 2004 and 2019, on average growth translated to decent employment. This was interrupted by the pandemic which caused larger growth in distress employment,” it added.

The latest report comes ahead of the upcoming state elections and general elections slated for May 2024, and amid protests by opposition parties over joblessness.

Azim Premji university had done a report before 2019 elections which stated that five million jobs were lost during 2016-2018 .

Though the report did not establish a link, the government move to demonetize ₹500 and ₹1,000 banknotes came in November 2019.

Recently, during August 2023, the Union government unveiled ₹1.18 trillion worth of programmes spanning mobility to digital sectors, which is expected to create jobs.

However, manufacturing sector, a key job segment in an economy, has failed to expand, and informal services have become main job creators, making it a challenging situation for the policymakers.

“On the one hand, the economy has grown rapidly since the 1980s, drawingmillions of workers out of agriculture. And the proportion of salaried or regular wage workers has risen whilethat of casual workers has fallen,” the report said.

“On the other hand, manufacturing has failed to expand its share of GDPor employment significantly. Instead construction and informal services have been the main job creators,” it added.

The report also stated that gender-based earnings disparities have reduced in India over the past decades.

“In 2004, salaried women workers earned 70% of what men earned. By 2017 the gap had reduced and women earned 76% of what men did,” it said.

“Since then the gap has remained constant till 2021-22,” it added.

A spokesperson of Ministry of Labour and Employment didn’t respond to queries.