Tackling Challenges of Youth
Unemployment in India

Youth unemployment and underemployment is prevalent around the world and India is no exception. Young Indians face major barriers because of poverty and low levels of human capital.

On one hand, higher growth has raised the youth’s aspirations for more meaningful jobs, thereby leading to a mismatch between jobs offered and jobs that educated youth are looking for. On the other hand, in today’s era of the fourth industrial revolution, young people need to be equipped with necessary skills to work with new technologies. Spells of unemployment, particularly long spells, can lead to scarring effects and a higher likelihood of being unemployed later in life and a wage penalty.

As witnessed in many developing countries, the unemployment rate increases with the level of education, which substantiates the fact that youth without education often belong to low income households and hence, cannot afford to remain unemployed for long. However, a high unemployment rate among educated youth may result in problems relating to insurgency. In context of India, as per the Labour Bureau’s Employment Unemployment Survey (EUS) 2015, unemployment rates among persons with higher secondary education and above ranges between 7.7 per cent and 16. 3 per cent when compared to less educated individuals (1.8 per cent and 4.2 per cent). This clearly suggests that the problem of unemployment among educated youth cannot be ignored. On the whole, the challenge is both in terms of job creation and the preparation of young people for the labour market to ensure that India’s demographic dividend does not become the oft quoted ‘demographic disaster’.

In order to tackle the challenges of participation and job quality for the youth of India, policy interventions should promote better quality education, on-the-job training, skill formation on the one hand and productive job creation on the other. Involving youth can be good from the angle of new innovative ideas and better designing of processes. In one such initiative, a multi-stakeholder partnership to equip adolescents and youth for the job market is taking shape. It is a platform (Yu Waah) that includes the central government, state governments, private sector, civil society organisations and several UN agencies which aims to co-create solutions for young people, including flexible learning programmes, life and employability skills, career guidance and work opportunities.

Another major shift has to happen at the level of the education system which presently does not focus on the objective of firing up creativity, building problem-solving skills, preparing students to work in a highly inter-connected, interdependent global work environment. There is limited industry focus and virtually no research and new knowledge creation. To begin with, education policymakers and academics must articulate what employability is and start focusing on equipping young men and women with the skills, the knowledge and tools to succeed in their future careers. Collection and analysis of appropriate data, its analysis with respect to various steps of this value chain may be used for evidence-driven policy-making. ■

Dr Alka Srivastava
asrivastava@devalt.org