Context: The report, titled “State of rural youth employment – 2024”, said that 70-85% of over 5,000 individuals surveyed pan-rural India wished to be employed in small manufacturing, retail, or business sectors.

• The rural youth employment – 2024 has been compiled by GDI, in partnership with Global Opportunity Youth Network (GOYN), Development Intelligence Unit (DIU), and Transform Rural India Foundation (TRI).

• The State of Rural Youth Employment Report 2024 reveals that 70-85% of employed rural youth in India wish to change their jobs.

• The study, conducted by the Development Intelligence Unit (DUI), surveyed 5,169 “opportunity youth” across 21 states.

Key highlights

• After agriculture, earnings through wage labour, and retail trade are the distant second (14.1%) and third (10.5%) sources of income, respectively, of rural working people.

• Agriculture and self-employment are no longer seen as aspirational by many rural youths due to low productivity and insufficient profits.

• The report also highlighted that among salaried jobs, younger male youth expressed clear preferences to government sector or private sector jobs; and among women youth, the preference remained for government jobs.

• The Report highlights significant gender disparities in workforce participation among rural youth. While over 50% of young men aged 18-25 are currently employed, only 25% of their female counterparts have paid jobs. 

• This trend extends to older age groups, with 85% of men aged 26-35 working compared to just 40% of women in the same bracket.

• 90% of male and 50% of female respondents interested in entrepreneurship require seed capital, with minimal demand for full training courses.

• A majority of respondents prefer employment close to their villages, even with a 20-30% lower income, indicating a need to boost local employment opportunities.

• The report underscores the need to make agriculture more attractive through better productivity, technical support, and crop diversification to address the rural employment gap.

Key suggestion

• The Economic Survey for 2023-24 said that of the 565 million workforce in the country, more than 45% are engaged in the agriculture sector. Of the rest, 11.4% are in manufacturing, 28.9% in services, and 13% in construction. 

• “The predominance of agriculture in the providing employment to nearly half of the population, especially females, is both a challenge and an opportunity,” the Economic Survey had noted.

• It suggested that the agro-processing sector should be seen from the lens for creating sustainable jobs in rural areas. 

• “Given that agriculture and related industries remain the mainstay of the rural economy, increasing productivity in this sector (agro-processing) is imperative to create jobs,”

• As per a report by InvestIndia, the Indian food processing market is estimated to reach $535 billion by 2025, growing at a CAGR of 15.2%. The Tier-2 and Tier3 cities could mirror the trend visible in metropolitan areas by consuming more processed food in the coming years, said the survey.