Perhaps the biggest policy challenge awaiting India is finding jobs for the approximately 280 million more workers expected to enter the Indian workforce by 2050. It’s a figure that has raised alarms within the United Nations, whose Human Development Report of 2016 highlighted India’s poor job-creation performance vis-a-vis China.
The problem is twofold – not just finding a job for new entrants, but for those already struggling to find employment. Despite two decades of rapid economic growth, between 1991 and 2013, only half of those searching for work obtained it. One reason is the slowdown in employment growth, with employment growth stagnant in all sectors since 2011. As an Economic and Political Weekly report stated:
There was an absolute decline in employment during the period 2013–14 to 2015–16, perhaps happening for the first time in independent India.
Very few are formally employed, which is why the 2011 National Sample Survey records unemployment at a low 2.2 percent. But these figures are seldom taken as accurate measures, especially when you consider that many take up contractless, low-paying jobs for want of a better alternative. As Montek Singh Ahuwalia, former Deputy Chairman of the erstwhile Planning Commission, explained, this comes under disguised unemployment.
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