A report by Azim Premji University states that the unemployment rate among graduates under 25 years of age is at 42 percent.
“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 a huge 42% for graduates under 25 years,” the report — STATE OF WORKING INDIA 2023: Social Identities and Labour Market Outcomes states.
What it does and does not say
The unemployment rate falls from over 40 percent for educated youth under 25 years of age to less than 5 percent for graduates who are 35 years and above, implying that eventually graduates do find jobs.
However, it is not known the nature of jobs they find and whether they match their skills and aspirations.
Self employed women
On the matter of female employment, the report states that it rose since 2019 due to a distress-led increase in self-employment
Before Covid, 50% of women were self-employed, but this rose to 60% post Covid.
“Even two years after the 2020 lockdown, self-employment earnings were only 85% of what they were in the April-June 2019 quarter,” the report said.
Gender norms
It mentioned gender norms continue to play a big role in women’s employment.
Compared to households with no mother-in-law present, married women living in households where they are present but not employed are 20% (rural) to 30% (urban) less likely to be employed.
If the mother-in-law is employed herself, daughters-in-law are 50% (rural) to 70% (urban) more likely to be employed.
Caste
The report stated that Scheduled Caste workers declined rapidly over time in waste-related work and leather-related work.
“In the leather industry, the representation index declined sharply to 1.4 in 2021. In waste management and sewerage, over-representation of SCs decreased to 1.6 times in 2011 before increasing slightly again,” it said.
Lower-caste entrepreneurs remain rare
Even in the smaller organizations SC and ST owners are under-represented compared to their share in the overall workforce.
Correspondingly, upper caste overrepresentation increases with firm size.
Regular wage/salaried work
After declining since the 1980s, the share of workers with regular wage or salaried work started increasing in 2004.
It rose from 18% to 25% for men and 10% to 25% for women.
“Between 2004 and 2017, around 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 decreased due to the growth slowdown and the pandemic,” it added.
Does economic growth mean more jobs?
The report highlighted the importance of addressing the weak connection between economic growth and job creation.
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 distress employment,” it added.
Distress employment refers to when normally non-working population is forced to enter the labour market to supplement household income when income levels fall below sustenance.
