According to a new report by the International Labour Organization, India went through a labour crisis in 2021, especially hurting the youth in the 15-24 age group. Surveys conducted by the Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy show that the youth employment participation rate declined by 0.9 percentage points over the first nine months of 2021 compared to 2020.
There was a glimmer of hope when startup hiring increased in the middle of 2021, but with mass layoffs across sectors, there is an urgent need to explore other avenues. The government has tried to implement new policy measures, but they will take time to fructify. The youth cannot wait without a clear plan of action that will deliver results in the short term.
While the formal labour market looks grim, the emergence of passion economy as a source of employment is energising. ‘Passion economy’ refers to the emerging economic and cultural trend where people are building new kinds of careers working on things they are curious about, and how new creator platforms are enabling different kinds of jobs leveraging the internet. Today it is possible to monetise your individuality and creativity, and make a living doing what you love. The passion economy enables the creation of well-paying, self-directed jobs that offer autonomy, mastery and purpose along the way. It is fundamentally different from the gig economy.
The gig economy jobs standardised creativity, offered limited security and hourly rates that were often less than the minimum wages. These jobs were important, but did not rank high in terms of personal fulfilment and career advancement. There was a sense of drudgery among gig workers. Most of them work longer hours than investment bankers and software engineers, but barely make enough from the toil.
Internet enables niches to scale. Simply put, whether your interest is fishing, rock climbing or nuclear physics, you can leverage the internet and creator tools to build a community around your passion. Once the community is in place, you can monetise it by figuring out innovative ways to serve your community members.
That’s what I did when I quit my job at Microsoft in the middle of the pandemic to work full-time on my passion project, Network Capital (a career experimentation platform for millennials). I loved my work, but the more I reflected on my core values, the kind of life I wanted to build, and the way I wanted to use my skills, the more it became clear to me that embracing the passion economy was the way forward.
In these uncertain times, youth are likely to be left to fend for themselves. They will have to reach out to their networks to explore new roles and find or create opportunities for themselves.
Erstwhile side hustles will become full-blown jobs, creating a wave of micro-entrepreneurs, who will have to find their niche and figure out a reasonable business model. High-growth software startups will be accompanied by a category of hyper-local or niche-serving creators who will augment the country’s GDP and address the job crisis in a meaningful way.
Utkarsh Amitabh
Twitter: @utkarsh_amitabh
CEO, Network Capital; Chevening Fellow, University of Oxford