Imagine applying for a job with 67,000 openings. You’d assume that with a fairly decent resume, your chances would be quite high. But, as many young people in India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh found out in February, all is not what it seems. Vying for those 67,000 openings in the state police department were nearly 4.8 million jobseekers.
It’s a reminder of India’s growing unemployment crisis: a ticking time bomb. And it’s a problem that disproportionately affects young people. The India Employment Report 2024 found that the labour force participation rate for young people aged 15-29 was just 42 per cent, against 62.4 per cent for those aged 30-59 in 2022.
This rate has been declining for youngsters, the report said, and fell sharply from 54 per cent in 2000 – with the drop biggest for the group aged 15–19. The same trend was reflected in the worker population ratio. The message is clear: India must generate more jobs to sustain its economic growth.
India’s manufacturing sector, which many believed would rival China’s, has been a disappointment. In fact, India’s reliance on China has only grown.
Chinese imports have grown 2.3 times faster than India’s total imports over the past 15 years, according to a new report by the Global Trade Research Initiative. Since 2019, India’s exports to China have flattened out at around US$16 billion a year while its Chinese imports grew from US$70 billion to surpass US$101 billion last year, feeding the trade deficit.
Kamala Thiagarajan is a freelance journalist based in Madurai, southern India