The Challenge of Youth Employment in India: A Gender Perspective

Creating employment and decent jobs for youth is a global challenge, which has been further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic which has hurt young people more than any other group. In this broader global context, this paper analyses quantitative and qualitative dimensions of youth employment in India from a gender lens. We find that there has been a significant reduction in labour force participation rate especially among young females in rural areas during 2012–19, which has somewhat improved in 2021–22. However, Labour force participation as well as work participation of youth is still lower than the 2011–12 level. What is more unfortunate is that the unemployment rate is increasing among youth, especially among highly educated youth and young women in urban areas. Moreover, the increasing proportion of youth with NEET (not in education, employment, and training) status (33%) is also a serious concern especially among young women who were overrepresented in this category in 2020–21. On further examination of activity status of young women with NEET status, we find that nearly 45% of such young women were involved in domestic duties in 2021–22. In the labour market, young workers were highly concentrated in self-employment activities and within such activities most young men were involved in their own account activities while most females were unpaid family workers in 2021–22. Over the years, the presence of youth in regular salaried jobs, service sector, organized sector, and formal jobs has improved. However, gains for young female workers in these categories are very small compared to gains for their male counterparts. We find that quality of regular salaried jobs has also deteriorated over the years as around 70% of youth workers had no written job contract, 56% were not entitled to paid leave, and 61% were not eligible for any social security benefits in 2021–22. These indicators clearly reveal that qualitative aspects of youth employment challenge are much more severe in India. Therefore, the paper argues for urgent policy interventions to ensure access to productive and decent jobs for all in India.