The challenges for creating employment opportunities for Indian youth:

• There are challenges in terms of low levels of education and skill and high dropout rates and discontinuance of education impacting the employability of the Indian youth and heterogeneity in sectoral distribution of economic activity across regions.
• The choice of low skills jobs is evident from most of the youth entering farm sector followed by construction and manufacturing at the entry level (15-17 years) and shifting to trade and repair/transport sector followed by construction and manufacturing in the later years (18-29), though agriculture remains a dominant sector.
• Further, the unemployment rates have shown an increasing trend with rise in educational qualification at 18.4 per cent it is highest for those with Graduate and above level education and at 3 per cent lowest for those with up to primary level education.
• One of the reasons for low employability of youth is perhaps preference by majority of youth (85 per cent) in the age cohort 15-29 for general stream of education with only about 12.6 per cent for technical/professional education and only 2.4 per cent pursuing vocational education.
• There is also a need to increase formal employment, which presently constitutes about 8 per cent of the labour force.
• This is suggestive of schools evolving as learning institutions where vocational skills are included in the school curriculum right from Class VI onwards to arrest the disinterest among students/youth towards formal school education and enable them to develop an interest in learning skills for employment.
• The transition from school to work requires encouraging youth to choose technical or vocational education over general education and incentivizing the fees for acquiring vocational/technical education as most of these institutes are in the private sector and out of reach of youth from the low income category.

Emerging avenue for the Indian workforce which is expected to increase to 600 million by the year 2022:

• As per the Annual Survey of Industries 2013-14 Coke, and Refined Petroleum Products, Basic Metals, Food Products and Motor vehicles, Trailers and Semi-trailers across states contribute at least 80 per cent of gross value of output and more than 50 per cent of total industrial output is from capital intensive industries.
• The overall job ecosystem in India, however, is witnessing changes. The growth of technology-based sectors are impacting availability of livelihood opportunities as new jobs are being created either replacing the existing or new jobs due to change in processes and technology.
• The huge investments in infrastructure sectors such as Roads; Shipping; Smart Cities; Renewable Energy; Transport and Railways; Airports and Dedicated Freight Corridors are facilitating creation of jobs in the economy.
• The Atal Innovation Mission; Focus on Women Entrepreneurship; Mudra; Start-up India and Stand Up India are impacting availability of jobs and livelihood opportunities for millions in the rural and urban sector even with low skills.
• Besides these, sectors such as telecom; banking and financial services; healthcare; retail; automobile and tourism and hospitality sector also have the potential to generate employment.

This calls for an employment strategy focusing both on manufacturing and services led growth as suited to the demographic and educational/skill profile of the States/UTs addressing the three types of job deficits that India faces viz;

 (i) a deficit in the overall number of jobs

(ii) a deficit in the number of formal jobs

(iii) a deficit in the number of jobs for women

would be a better strategy to adopt.

Sectors that have the potential of creating maximum employment:

• India has moved from agriculture led growth to service led growth even much before the technological revolution started impacting livelihoods. The services sector has adapted digital technology impacting a large pool of young labour force looking forward to job opportunities in the service sector.
• Apart from skilling/re-skilling, the challenge that India faces in capitalizing upon its demographic advantage lies in the changes being brought to existing job descriptions as well as emergence of new job roles and skills in today’s digital age commonly referred to as the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
• Sectoral bifurcation of jobs may fade out in the years to come with the integration of digital technology in all job roles across sectors and the prospectus would be for IT integrated job roles.
• Already, manufacturing has been restricted to core manufacturing with rest of the jobs being outsourced and therefore it has been transferred to the service sector.
• Area of Big Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Robotic Process Automation, Internet of Things, Cloud Computing and Virtual Reality, Block Chain and Electric Vehicles will create highly skilled and high paid jobs in the future.
• However, for the large segment of poorly educated and low skilled labour force, opportunities lies in apparel; textile and leather; tourism and hospitality sector; construction as also in the tech-based entrepreneurship which has seen rapid growth both in rural and the urban areas.

Government initiatives like Start-up India; Mudra; Stand up India; Swachh Bharat are creating significant employment opportunities for low skilled workforce. Further, the sectors where government is investing hugely and policy interventions are promoting investments viz agriculture, infrastructure; auto motive; textiles and leather are throwing open new employment opportunities for the new entrant to the labour market as also to the existing labour through reskilling better employment opportunities.

Emphasising skills rather than mere degrees:

• Labour markets in India are beset by a strange paradox wherein any job opening has vast number of applicants and yet, jobs requiring a medium of skills are difficult to fill.
• The Skill requirements for modern manufacturing jobs are far more complex than those required for simple assembly operations.
• In today’s technology driven economy it is not easy to predict which occupations will grow and which will decline.
• The key challenge that our education system faces is training potential workers in skills that are transferrable across occupations while simultaneously meeting needs of specific industries.
• This can be addressed through two-pronged approach

(i) Teaching skills that are transferrable across occupations; and

(ii) Imparting specific skills required by particular industry/occupation combination as a part of industry specific apprenticeship programmes.

• Through work-based learning, students acquire the skills that are valued in workplace.
• Work-based learning is also a way to develop public-private partnerships and to allow social partners and employers to get involved in the development of VET programmes, often including the definition of curricular frameworks.

There is an urgent need to align the National Education Policy with the National Skill Development Policy and alignment of vocational courses in schools with the National Skills Qualifications Framework (NSQF). The Atal Tinkering Labs are encouraging students develop the habit of innovative thinking and obtain transferable practical skills. There is need for each school to have a counsellor and provision for aptitude testing. There is also an urgent need to link the short term training programmes with the National Apprenticeship Program to ensure that students have hands on training for better employability and as per local requirements.

Need to change mind-sets in order to create employment and foster the spirit of entrepreneurship:

• The   government of India has taken a large number of initiatives since 2014 which are changing the mindset of people to foster the spirit of entrepreneurship.
• The earlier challenges in terms of access to credit, market linkages, space and network and mentors are being made available through programmes like Start-up India; Ease of Doing Business; Stand Up India, MUDRa and Atal Innovation Mission.