Economic Survey Reveals Skill Gap Crisis; 1 in 2 Indian Graduates Unfit for Employment

Economic Survey 2024: Sixty-five per cent of India’s fast-growing population is under 35, and many lack the skills needed by a modern economy. Estimates show that about 51.25 per cent of the youth is deemed employable, according to Economic Survey 2024.

In other words, about one in two are not yet readily employable, straight out of college. However, it must be noted that the percentage has improved from around 34 per cent to 51.3 per cent in the last decade, it added.

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Employment and Skill Development: Towards Quality

Indian labour market indicators have improved in the last six years, with the unemployment rate declining to 3.2 per cent in 2022-23.

Rising youth and female participation in the workforce presents an opportunity to tap the demographic and gender dividend.

The net payroll additions under EPFO have more than doubled in the past five years, signalling healthy growth in formal employment.

With artificial intelligence taking root in several spheres of economic activity, steering technological choices towards collective welfare is key. Employers owe it to themselves to strike a balance between deploying technology and labour.

To generate and sustain quality employment, agro-processing and care economy are two promising candidates.

The Government has implemented measures to boost employment, foster self-employment, and promote worker welfare.

The rise in the number of candidates undergoing skill development through the Government’s flagship programmes has underlined the thrust to ‘Skill India’.

Many regulatory chokeholds, such as those related to land use, building codes, restricting sectors and hours open to women’s employment, hold back employment generation. Releasing them is guaranteed to boost employment and raise women’s labour force participation rate.

The survey also pointed out the 2022-23 Annual Report of the Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (MSDE), which highlights that “as per NSSO, 2011-12 (68th round) report on Status of Education and Vocational Training in India, among persons of age 15-59 years, about 2.2 per cent reported to have received formal vocational training and 8.6 per cent reported to have received non-formal vocational training”.

The Annual Report further enumerates the challenges in the skilling and entrepreneurship landscape in the country, such as

(i) Public perception that views skilling as the last option meant for those who have not been able to progress/have opted out of the formal academic system.

(ii) Skill development programmes of the Central Government are spread across more than 20 Ministries/Departments without any robust coordination and monitoring mechanism to ensure convergence.

(iii) Multiplicity in assessment and certification systems that leads to inconsistent outcomes and causes confusion among the employers.

(iv) Paucity of trainers, inability to attract practitioners from industry as faculty.

(v) Mismatch between demand and supply at the sectoral and spatial levels.

(vi) Limited mobility between skill and higher education programmes and vocational education. (vii) Very low coverage of apprenticeship programmes

(viii) Narrow and often obsolete skill curricula.

(ix) Declining labour force participation rate of women.

(x) Pre-dominant non-farm, unorganised sector employment with low productivity but no premium for skilling.

(xi) Non- inclusion of entrepreneurship in the formal education system.

(xii) Lack of mentorship and adequate access to finance for start-ups.

(xiii) Inadequate impetus to innovation driven entrepreneurship.

(xiv) Lack of assured wage premium for skilled people