Really alarming

Publication:Times Of India Kolkata;

Date:Nov 8, 2007;

Section:Times Business;

Page Number:15

Indian youths unemployable: Study TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Mumbai: If its jobs India’s youth are looking for, there are many waiting to be snapped up. The problem, says the India Labour Report 2007, is that the Indian youth are simply “unemployable”. “90% of employment opportunities require vocational skills. But 90% of our college and school output has only bookish knowledge,” says the study commissioned by TeamLease Services, a human resource and staffing agency.

While only 8% of the youth are unemployed, 53% have some kind of skill deprivation. This becomes critical, as nearly 90% of jobs in India are still skill based, with the bulk of employment coming from farming, fisheries and other related work.

“Youth unemployability is a bigger crisis than unemployment as poor quality of skills or education show up in low incomes rather than unemployment. 58% of graduates make less than Rs 75,000 per year,” the report says. Little wonder then that India’s per capita income continues to be among the lowest in the world, despite being the fastest growing economy in the world.

That is also the reason, economists say, while India will grow to be among the richest countries in the world, its citizens will not be as wealthy as the average American and European citizen. The math is fairly simple. Between a little over a billion people, even a marginal increase in their earnings can propel the country’s GDP into a different league. For the people who put it there though, things will change only marginally.

The India Labour report estimates that repairing this skill deficit could cost Rs 4,90,000 crore, or 10% of our GDP over the next two years. While current budgets facilitate for 25% of this amount, merely allocating more funds is not the solution.

Failure in quality education and skills, lack of technical and vocational training and policy blunders make it imperative that our system needs a structural change, the report states. A negligible percentage of children who complete the primary level of education continue to the diploma level and an even smaller ratio go on further. The discontinuation of education leads to the accumulation of job seekers in the bottom of the education pyramid and the immediate fallout of this is the low skill levels among the working population.

For example, India IT professionals may be highly in demand all over the world, but figures reveal that only 30% of them are actually employable in the IT sector. With almost all big multinationals looking to set up shop in India, the gap between the supply and demand for IT professionals is estimated at 500,000 in the next three years.

The fact that only 25% of engineering graduates, 15% of finance and accounting professionals and 10% of professionals with any kind of degree are suitable to be employed in global organisations is more alarming.