By C Adhikesavan
Nearly 8.7 crore Indians between the ages of 15 and 29 are neither studying, working, nor undergoing any form of training. That figure, roughly equal to the population of Germany, comes from a recent NITI Aayog assessment of the country’s NEET population, those Not in Education, Employment or Training. For a nation that repeatedly describes its young population as a demographic dividend, the number is a serious warning. Close to one crore young Indians enter the workforce every year. The challenge is not a shortage of people. It is a shortage of productive work that matches their education and aspirations.
he education-to employment pipeline has become an obstacle course. Barely 8 per cent of graduates find jobs that actually correspond to their degrees. For many from low-income families the costs are especially harsh. Families already stretch to pay for college, private tuition, books, transport and accommodation. They are then told to enrol in skill courses that require still more money. The person who least can afford unemployment is asked to pay extra simply to become employable.
Three traditional pathways are narrowing. Government jobs remain highly prized, yet paper leaks, repeated postponements of examinations and limited vacancies have jammed that door. Private sector entry-level hiring, particularly in information technology, has contracted sharply, by nearly 80 per cent in some recent years, as companies increasingly rely on automation and artificial intelligence. The third path, formal skills training, often fails to bridge the gap between what colleges teach and what the market needs. An entire generation stands in a hallway with three half-closed doors ahead of it.
The foundations of the problem begin in the classroom. Earlier NITI Aayog findings recorded more than one lakh schools without electricity, a similar number without functioning toilets for girls, and large numbers of single teacher schools where one person handles every subject and every grade. India has never approached the long-promised target of spending 6 per cent of GDP on education. Many college curricula continue to prepare students for an economy that no longer exists. When the base is weak, higher education and job readiness suffer.
Economists who examine the data carefully reject the claim that no jobs are being created. Growth in cement and steel volumes, construction activity, real-estate sales and automobile demand demonstrates that economic activity is generating employment. Trucks move, buildings rise and factories expand. Yet significant slack persists in the labour market. The post-pandemic recovery remains incomplete; the economy is still estimated to be roughly 10 percent below its pre-pandemic trend path.
In addition to the one crore new entrants each year, there is substantial hidden unemployment in agriculture, under-employment among those already working, and a rising number of women who now have the time, mobility and desire to work but cannot find suitable opportunities. Creating enough productive work for every new entrant plus those already waiting would require sustained real growth closer to 9.5–10 per cent, an extremely high bar for an economy of India’s size and for an economy of India’s size and complexity.
The realistic assessment is therefore nuanced. Jobs are being generated, but not in sufficient numbers or of sufficient quality to absorb the full demographic wave. complexity. The realistic assessment is therefore nuanced. Jobs are being generated, but not in sufficient numbers or of sufficient quality to absorb the full demographic wave.
A multi-sector approach is essential. Manufacturing and services must both expand. Tourism remains a particularly under-utilised opportunity. Foreign tourist arrivals have still not recovered to pre pandemic levels even as global cross-border tourism has surpassed them. Tourism is relatively resistant to automation and can generate large volumes of employment if regulatory and infrastructure bottlenecks are cleared. Urbanisation offers another avenue. Municipal employment and civic services in Indian cities remain far thinner than in comparable cities elsewhere; better urban governance and services would themselves create jobs while improving quality of life.
Micro, small and medium enterprises continue to be the backbone of employment generation, yet they face persistent constraints of credit, compliance burden and regulatory complexity. Some high-profile successes, such as the opening of the space sector to private players and the subsequent launch of India’s first private rocket, demonstrate what focused policy can achieve. Such examples remain too limited in scale to absorb the millions of young people seeking work. Private capital formation is occurring in certain sectors, large planned expansions in steel capacity are one illustration, but overall investment needs continued policy support and regulatory easing.
Structural reforms cannot be treated as a completed checklist. Reducing the number of approvals required for hotels and other businesses, relaxing floor space and land-use norms, improving the ease of doing business and ensuring consistent policy are ongoing tasks. Energy security remains a critical vulnerability. No large economy has achieved lasting prosperity without greater control over its energy sources; India remains exposed to global energy price shocks.
The cultural expectation of one permanent government job for life is fading. What must replace it is not resignation but a shift toward creating work as well as seeking it. Education systems need to emphasise adaptability, the capacity to learn, unlearn and relearn, rather than static credentials. Skill development must be treated as central to livelihoods rather than an afterthought. The 8.7 crore NEET youth represent both risk and opportunity.
A demographic dividend that is not activated becomes demographic pressure: idle talent, delayed economic independence, family strain and social frustration. The classroom and the job market are the two rooms that decide their fate. Both continue to underperform relative to the scale of the challenge. Holding policymakers accountable requires more than slogans. It requires measurable progress on education quality and infrastructure, skills that match actual labour-market demand, regulatory environments that allow small and medium enterprises to expand, and sustained growth that generates productive employment across multiple sectors.
Growth in the range of 7–8 per cent can create a meaningful number of jobs. Absorbing the full cohort of new entrants and those already outside the system will demand still greater and more consistent effort over many years. Without that effort, India’s young population will remain waiting outside an economy that has not yet made sufficient room for them. (IPA Service)
Courtesy: New Age
India’s education pipeline has effectively collapsed
