Indian,People say that the biggest problem in the country today is that young people are not getting jobs. They used to say that Uttar Pradesh is a state of youth and activists. But now, its youth can’t find jobs. This job crisis is a serious problem, and no one talks about it. The youth are struggling to get jobs, and this issue needs attention.
In our country, we have a lot of young people, but many of them are not ready for jobs. Among graduates, 80% do not have jobs. Additionally, 83% are not even fit for the jobs available.
The population you’re expecting to have jobs doesn’t actually have them. If you look at the total population, 24 years ago, only 35% of people in India were employed. Today, that number has reached 65%.
It might seem like there are no jobs left, but the issue is deeper. Every year, one crore (10 million) children graduate in India. That’s as many people as the entire population of Sweden. Out of these graduates, 50 lakh (5 million) are not even qualified for any job, meaning they are unemployable.
TCS has said they have 80,000 vacancies, but they can’t find skilled candidates to fill them. This unemployable population is becoming a burden on the country instead of driving its growth. If this continues, we won’t be able to compete with countries like China and Japan; we’ll be competing with Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Unemployment vs. Unemployability(Indian)
First, let’s understand the difference between unemployment and unemployability. Unemployment means you have the skills to work but can’t find a job in the market.In India, many young people are not employable. About 60% of them don’t know modern skills and haven’t even heard of them. In rural areas, the situation is worse. Around 80% of the youth there have no vocational training.
Most young people study engineering, but even then, 80% of them don’t understand new technology. Those who do get jobs often don’t work in engineering fields and aren’t well trained for their roles.
Every year, about one million students graduate. Of these, 33% study arts and 14% study commerce. However, most jobs in India require technical skills. As a result, these students don’t fit into the job market well. They often end up preparing for government exams, but vacancies are limited and exams sometimes get leaked. Privatization also means fewer government job seats are available.
This makes it tough for these students to find suitable jobs.
What are the Challenges Faced by B.Tech Graduates in Job Market?
Every year, about 1.5 million students graduate with a B.Tech degree, but only one out of ten gets a job. The reason is that 80% of these students pass by memorizing facts without learning modern technology. The situation is even worse for MBA graduates. About 93% of them are rejected by companies because what they learned in college is outdated by 20 years.
Industries have moved ahead, but colleges are stuck with old courses. In foreign colleges, people like Mark Zuckerberg come to give lectures. Have you ever heard of Mukesh Ambani giving a lecture at an IIM? This year, things are so bad that premier institutes like BITS Pilani are asking their alumni to help current students find jobs.
Even IIMs are struggling. IIM Lucknow is asking in old student WhatsApp groups if anyone can help find jobs for the current batch. It’s clear that colleges are teaching outdated curricula and the teachers have no industry experience. As a result, students end up being unemployable even after getting their degrees.
If you talk about an MBA, a good course should cover all the modern trends in the business world. Professors should have real industry experience. Marketing should be taught by those who have handled million-dollar budgets. Problem-solving should be taught by people who have worked in big consulting firms.
This way, you stay updated. You don’t need to memorize everything, even Google’s CEO doesn’t do that. But you should have basic technology knowledge.
The Unemployability Crisis: Neglecting Skill Development
Unemployment isn’t just a problem for students. Even working professionals can become unemployable if they don’t update their skills. Many people join a company with certain skills and keep doing their daily tasks without learning new things. Over time, companies stop promoting them, and they start having trouble finding new jobs.
After a few years, younger employees who join the company can do better work for less money. This makes companies think about letting the older employees go. By the age of 34-35, these workers might become part of the unemployable workforce due to a lack of skills.
I read a Gallup survey report that said only 14% of employees in India feel they are growing well in their jobs. The other 86% say they are struggling. Globally, 34% of employees feel they are doing well in their jobs. This shows that the number of satisfied employees in India is quite low.
Unemployment has increased rapidly in the last 20-30 years. Some reasons for this are that there haven’t been any major wars or invasions recently, and people’s life expectancy has increased, meaning they live longer. Data collection methods have also improved, giving us more accurate unemployment data.
The most important reason is that technology is updating very quickly. Major changes in technology now happen every ten years, which used to take hundreds of years before. However, our education, skill development, and training methods are still stuck in old ways from a hundred years ago.
How is Technology Impacting the Employability of the Youth?
About 30 years ago, 2G internet services started in India. It took 12 years for 3G to arrive, but within 4 years, 4G was available across the country. Then, in just 2-3 years, talks about 5G began, and now work on 6G has started. This isn’t just about connectivity; technology is advancing rapidly in every sector, from services to manufacturing.
However, our students and workers aren’t being trained quickly enough. Take AI as an example. In the last year or two, generative AI has become a topic of discussion. When OpenAI launched ChatGPT, everyone was amazed at how it could write poems, songs, letters, and emails. Soon after, MidJourney came out with image generation. Initially, people made fun of its poor-quality images, but within months, it created such realistic images that someone won a photography contest with an AI-generated picture.
After that, AI moved on to video generation. In April 2023, a video of Will Smith eating spaghetti surfaced. People thought it was poorly made. But now OpenAI has launched SORA. Just a few months later, people are generating movie-quality videos in seconds using SORA. Seeing SORA’s capabilities, Hollywood filmmaker Tyler Perry said he wouldn’t spend billions expanding his studio anymore.
AI is impacting every field so quickly, but show me a college curriculum where it’s taught as a skill. How many companies are actively preparing their employees for these skills? That’s why I say that as technology grows faster, the percentage of unemployable people will increase. Imagine the impact if a large part of our youth population remains unemployable.
The Impact of Unemployable Youth on India’s Economy
If a large part of our young population remains unemployable, it will directly impact India’s productivity. This means our economy and GDP will decline. It’s simple to understand. Many MNCs operate in India because they find cheap and skilled young workers here. If we don’t teach new skills to our workforce over time, these companies will move to other countries.
As a result, youth unemployment will rise, tax generation will drop, and economic growth will slow down. Along with this, crime rates, drug consumption, and suicides will increase rapidly. The service and manufacturing sectors are the main sources of skill-based employment. These two sectors contribute significantly to India’s GDP.
The service sector alone created 4.9 million jobs in 2023, making it the largest job creator among individual sectors. It grew rapidly after the 1991 economic reforms and includes fields like telecommunication, healthcare, finance, and accounts. If our workforce remains unemployable, there will be huge losses in this sector.
The manufacturing sector contributes 17% to GDP and could reach 25% by 2025, employing 28 million people. Companies like Samsung and Apple are setting up large factories in India. However, these opportunities are sustainable only if we train our workforce with new skills. Otherwise, these opportunities will shift to other Asian countries like Bangladesh, Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia where cheap and skilled labor is available.
Advanced Skills Indian Youth Need for Modern Job Opportunities
In manufacturing, Bangladesh has set up many cheap shops and taken over much of the textile industry from India. After 2019, many companies left China and moved to the Philippines. U.S. companies even planned a billion-dollar investment in the Philippines. This investment could have come to India, but due to rising unemployment and negative reports, investments are going to other countries.
To solve this, there are some important steps. In 2015, PM Modi launched the Skill India program to make youth skilled. By 2023, over one crore people were trained, and 22 lakh got jobs. However, Skill India mainly targets small businesses. These skills don’t help in getting jobs in MNCs or the manufacturing sector which need advanced skills.
Today’s management courses still focus on traditional market concepts, but industries have moved beyond that. Modern businesses need skills in new technologies, which current management courses don’t cover. A survey showed that only 40% of Indians aged 15-29 have basic computer knowledge, and just 2.5% know programming languages like Python and JavaScript.
To teach advanced skills, Skill India needs a bigger budget and more experts. Currently, the government spends Rs 5000 crore on basic skills training. It would be better if the government partnered with private companies for training programs. Private companies could run training camps and get tax rebates in return. This way, private sectors get skilled workers, and the government’s training budget is reduced.
The government also needs to update the education system’s curriculum but should focus on bridging the gap between industry needs and education until then. If colleges teach outdated curriculums that industries don’t need, students will remain unemployable. Partnering with businesses to design robust courses can make students industry-ready right after graduation, saving businesses training costs and being a fast solution since most professional courses last two to four years.