DEHRADUN: A report by Uttarakhand government has revealed that youth unemployment rate (age group 15-29 years) in the state has doubled since the financial year 2004-05 from 6% to 13.3%.
Commenting on the issue, state cabinet minister and spokesperson for the government said, "The efforts are on by the state government to generate at least 3 lakh direct jobs from the investment and other efforts."
'Uttarakhand Human Development Report 2019, released in December 2019, has collated data till year 2017. This is three times the adult unemployment rate of 4.2% pointing towards the increasing proportion of unemployed youth in the state.
According to government data, the national average for youth unemployment stood 10.23% in year 2018.
The report reveals that youth unemployment is high amongst the men in plains districts and urban areas of the state.
"The area wise difference is significantly higher among girls compared to boys, four times more in the hills districts vis-à-vis the plains districts and more than double in urban areas as compared to rural areas. Clearly, this reflects alarmingly high unemployment amongst the youth population posing a major policy challenge," says the report.
Out of total 13 districts, 9 are hill districts while two are plain (Udham Singh Nagar, Haridwar) and two (Dehradun, Nainital) are partly hill and partly plain.
As the state government will be tabling its budget next month, issue of unemployment plagues the government, state and its people, especially the youth. The budget is estimated to be more than Rs 53,000 Crore.
The report also reveals that the unemployment situation is worse amongst the educated youth (above secondary level) at 17.4 percent for the state as a whole, with the unemployment rate for the educated male youth being higher (19.9 percent) compared to educated female youth (12.3 percent).
More than 4000 representatives, officials and shareholders from 600 companies from Delhi, Mumbai, Gujarat, Uttarakhand, Karnataka, Kerala and many other states from automobile, engineering, construction, farming, dairy, banking and many other sectors participated in the summit in September, last year.
Elaborating on results of the summit of last year, the minister also added that in the last 15 months, 391 projects have been identified for investment of Rs 17,405 crore rupees in Uttarakhand state.
Dinesh Kothari (26), masters in political science who still awaits his government teaching job said, "Such high youth unemployment rates point towards flaws in our policies and require effective policy interventions."