Although India is the world’s fastest-growing large economy, it faces a serious challenge of dealing with joblessness, especially among the youth. There was a recent bout of social unrest with the youth taking to the streets to force the ruling dispensation to drop its education minister who presided over a “leaky” exam system and appoint a high-powered task force to fix it. This was dramatic, but not as far-reaching as the Gen Z uprisings that triggered the regime change in Nepal in September 2025, Bangladesh in August 2024, and Sri Lanka in July 2022. All eyes will be on the future course of action when the protesting youth leadership meets on August 5 in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar in Maharashtra. The frustrations of finding jobs certainly deserve priority.
The latest unemployment rate for those between 15-29 years of age is almost three times higher at 15.8% than the overall rate of 5.4% in April-June 2026, according to official quarterly periodic labour force surveys. Youth unemployment rose year-on-year by 7.4%, while the overall rate remained unchanged. This is a current weekly status estimate that captures those who sought or were available for work during the reference period of a week preceding the survey. While nationwide protests occurred over the leaked National Eligibility cum Entrance Test, around 30% of youth are idle as they were Not in Education, Employment or Training last year. A growing reserve army of unemployed or idle youth portends serious strains in the social fabric.
Unemployment remains a key concern for educated youth
Unemployment is the biggest concern for educated youth who prefer to wait for better opportunities, unlike the poor who take up whatever is available. But this cannot be an indefinite wait and can force them to accept even lowly positions. This can also erupt into violence, as with the Agnipath scheme for recruitment into the army four years ago. That year also witnessed rioting in Bihar due to anger over the non-transparent and problematic hiring process in the railways as more than 10 million aspirants signed up for 35,000 openings. The job situation is indeed dismal as graduates, post-graduates, MBAs, engineers, and lawyers will soon be sweeping the streets of Nagpur as class IV municipal corporation employees.
If the restive youth take to the streets again to protest for gainful employment, this would be an existential challenge for the ruling dispensation. To be sure, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has stepped up his outreach to the young citizenry via Instagram. He is a powerful influencer, but the grim situation on the jobs front calls for more than holding out the promise of government jobs ahead of important assembly and national elections. PM Modi is acutely aware of the need to expeditiously address joblessness as the electorate that swept him to power for a historic third term was predominantly young from villages and small towns. He promised 20 million jobs each year, but the achievement has been underwhelming.
India’s skilling gap remains wide
The government’s skill development initiatives have only modestly promoted employment opportunities. Four iterations of its flagship programme, the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana has trained 16.5 million people, of which three-fourths have been certified and only one-fifths have been placed. If we consider only short-term training in the first three iterations of this scheme, only 43% have secured jobs. This programme cannot really take off without the greater involvement of India Inc. The challenge is daunting — the average Indian worker has less than eight years of education, much less than the 14 years of a typical worker in China. Only 5% of India’s workforce has received formal skill training, compared to 80% and 96% in countries like Japan and South Korea.
As “nothing is more dangerous than reasonably fed youth who find little meaning in their lives and prospects” — to borrow an expression of an FE column by Ashok Ganguly, R Gopalakrishnan, and Rakesh Mohan — generating more jobs for the largest cohort of Gen Z in the world is a systemic imperative. Of course, it entails promoting employment-intensive growth, besides labour reform and incentivising India Inc to invest more to create jobs. But more importantly, it entails fixing long years of over-promising and under-delivery. The accumulated burden of lapses in governance also must be addressed. The time has come for out-of-the-box and creative thinking associated with the architect of liberalisation, Manmohan Singh, argue these columnists.
If the leadership of the youth movement is to decide on the future action plan, they need to look no further than the South Asian neighbourhood. In Nepal, regime change happened because of Gen Z’s frustrations regarding the lack of jobs — with unemployment among those between 15-24 years of age as high as 20.6% — and widespread corruption of the political class. The youth felt there was no future in this system that forced them to leave the country for jobs. In Bangladesh, the students agitated against the quota system for government jobs. In Sri Lanka, the unrest was against crippling shortages of essentials and double-digit inflation. Although the nationwide protests in India wrested noteworthy gains, there is a need to press for employment opportunities.
The writer is an economics and business commentator based in New Delhi.
Disclaimer: The views expressed are the author’s own and do not reflect the official policy or position of Financial Express.