We All know that the unemployment rate is calculated by expressing the number of unemployed persons as a percentage of the total number of people in the labour force. The labour force is the sum of the numbers of people employed and unemployed. Joblessness in India primarily refers to educated young people seeking jobs in the formal economy. This is crucial because the informal economy gives jobs to 90% of the workforce and generates half the economic output. These are poor, unskilled or semi-skilled people. 75% of jobs will require advanced digital skills by 2030 as Gen Z becomes the most digitally-capable generation yet. That’s according to a new report on the impact of COVID-19 on Gen Z’s employment prospects, which was published by advisory firm Oxford Economics and commissioned by camera and social media company Snap. It claims that by the end of this decade, 75% of jobs will require advanced digital skills, with employers looking for knowledge in areas such as augmented reality , a market expected to see a 10-fold increase in value by 2023.
PM Modi wants the recruitments to be completed on a ‘mission mode’ in the next year and a half. This move is good, but it should not be regarded as the cure for the grave problem of unemployment. According to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, the unemployment rate came down from 7.83 per cent in April to 7.12 per cent in May, though it is still very high. The fall came as the number of employed zoomed by 1 million in May, taking the total number of employed persons in the country to 404 million. As per official estimates, India, Asia’s third-largest economy, has 13 million active jobseekers, with only 220,000 vacancies. Because of fewer jobs, more discouraged youth are taking menial roles or looking to move abroad, which shows the overall labour participation rate dropped from 46 per cent to 40 per cent between 2017 and 2022.
The availability of government jobs will also make them happy. It needs to be mentioned here though that we can’t rely much on government jobs, for they are a few lakhs, while the requirement is in crores. The real employment generation can come only from fast economic growth. The government can help by expediting economic reforms and increasing deregulation. The country needs more investment in labour-intensive industries. Skilling and tapping tourism could be potentially crucial areas. Also, India has one of the lowest female workforce participation rates in the world, down from about 35% in 2005 to 21% now. This can be a significant opportunity.
