There is no doubt that India faces a serious challenge of dealing with joblessness especially among the youth. They remain restive due to the limited avenues for gainful employment. The latest official current weekly status estimate of unemployment for those between 15-29 years of age is almost three times higher at 15.9% than the overall rate of 5.4% in April-June 2026. However, there are questions whether the unemployment rate captures labour market distress as job seekers may get discouraged by the dearth of gainful employment and even opt out of the labour force. A less debated but far more powerful metric of idleness or labour under-utilisation is the share of youth not in employment, education, or training (NEET). The latest current weekly status estimate of NEET youth was as high as 29.7% in January-December 2025.
Unless career pathways are established, a substantial reserve army of NEET youth portends serious strains in the country’s social fabric. The official think tank, Niti Aayog, put out a number of 87 million as the NEET cohort based on the data of the National Sample Survey 78th round collected during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020-21. More recent estimates indicate much higher numbers of 92 to 99 million. Although it is true that this metric cannot be misinterpreted as constituting the unemployed or an addition to the youth unemployment rate, the NEET youth cohort does include the unemployed as also those who are not part of the labour force. The all-India NEET youth estimate of 29.7% is 6% unemployed plus 23.7% out of the labour force. This is a comprehensive measure of youth who have chosen not to participate in the labour market.
India’s NEET youth vastly exceed what is observed in developed nations like the UK where 981,000 young people, who were not found in employment, education or training, have been described as a “lost generation”. There are similarities as the NEETs in both nations are educated; 15% of this cohort in the UK, for instance, has degrees. Around 57.5% of the NEET cohort of 15-29 years of age in India has higher than secondary levels of education with a 23.8% share of graduates and postgraduates at an all-India level in 2025. The share of graduates and postgraduates is as high as 49% in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. However, 69.3% of youth have not received technical or vocational training. As the NEETs include the unemployed, clearly the policy challenge is to ensure their transition back to gainful employment.
If the restive youth take to the streets again to protest for better jobs, this would be an existential challenge for the ruling dispensation. Generating more employment for the largest cohort of Gen Z in the world is indeed a systemic imperative. Of course, this entails promoting employment-intensive growth, besides labour reform and incentivising India Inc to invest more to create jobs. As the NEET youth are “constrained by the absence of income and sunk cost of prior education”, Niti Aayog rightly advocates provision of subsidised training options, alongside dedicated financial support where constraints are most binding. As the government’s skill development initiatives have only modestly promoted employment opportunities, these can take off only with the greater involvement of Indian industry. Unless more job opportunities are opened up, the high levels of youth unemployment and NEETs will keep unrest on the boil.