NEW DELHI: Despite witnessing progress in various aspects of India’s labour market, the unemployment rate has reached 42% among graduates under 25 years, as per the State of Working India 2023 report released by Azim Premji University.
“Post-Covid, the unemployment rate is lower than it was pre-Covid, for all education levels. But it remains above 15% for graduates and more worryingly it touches 42% for graduates under 25 years,” the report said.
As per the report, after stagnating since the 1980s, the share of workers with regular wage or salaried work started increasing in 2004, going from 18% to 25% for men and 10% to 25% for women. “Between 2004 and 2017, nearly 3 million regular wage jobs were created annually. Between 2017 and 2019 this jumped to 5 million per year. Since 2019, the pace of regular wage job creation has decreased due to the growth slowdown and the pandemic,” it added.
The report underscored the critical importance of addressing the weak connection between economic growth and job creation. It reveals that non-farm GDP growth and non-farm employment growth have shown no correlation since the 1990s. “However, between 2004 and 2019, on average, growth translated to decent employment. This was interrupted by the pandemic which caused larger growth in distressed employment,” it added.
Though the gender-based earnings disparities have reduced, a gap remained constant since 2017. 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, as per the report. The report highlighted the fact that even in the smallest firm sizes, SC and ST workers are under-represented compared to their share in the overall workforce. Even more significantly, SC and ST owners are barely represented among firms employing over 20 workers.