Swimming Against the Tide

Unemployment in a country with a 140 crore population is not surprising to anyone. However, finding a solution to reduce unemployment is one of the supreme responsibilities of the government. Is India Inc producing enough jobs? Well, according to the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) Measuring Productivity at Industrial Level India KLEMS (capital, labor, energy, material, services) data, India adjoined 4.67 crore jobs in FY24. The data further reveals that currently, there are 64.33 crore provisional jobs, up from 59.67 crore in FY23. But here is the catch. The real challenge is the sectors in which these job opportunities are opened up. The unemployment rate rose to an eight-month high of 9.2 percent in June 2024, according to data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE).

Let’s look a bit deeper. According to a Bloomberg report, around 46 percent of the workforce is still employed in agriculture, which contributes less than 20 percent to the gross domestic product (GDP). Meanwhile, the manufacturing sector accounts for only 11.4 percent of total jobs in 2023. Remember, the Indian government hopes to have 25 percent of the economy’s output come from manufacturing by 2025 by implementing different programs and policies. According to another report published in association with the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), Confederation of Indian Industry and Association of Indian Universities, India has a 60 percent to 73 percent demand-supply gap in key roles such as ML engineer, data scientist, DevOps engineer, and data architect.

However, many of the premier educational institutions in the country are swimming against this tide. For instance, XLRI-School of Management, with campuses in Jamshedpur and Delhi NCR, has announced 100 percent placements for the graduating batch of 2022-24 across its two-year PGDM (BM) and two-year PGDM (HRM) programs. It is a strong testament to the institute’s efforts to bridge this skill gap. On this note, we present our special yearly issue featuring the prestigious alumni of XLRI. Do let us know your thoughts.