Indian Labour Market Forecast Asserts 'India 2020' a Farfetched Dream

By siliconindia | Friday, 03 June 2016, 05:46 Hrs

BENGALURU: A recent research note about India’s labor market, published by Kotak Institutional Equities predicts the economic condition of India by 2022 and the result is quite shocking.

Regardless of the government, the public sector and the private sector’s initiatives and ideas to increase job opportunities, the report claims that by 2022 almost half-a-billion people would still be in the agriculture sector, contributing a mere 9^th of the total GDP. It also predicts that the per capita income will most probably be $1.50 per day, which is just over the recently estimated poverty line.

According to this report, although plans are being made to create up to 144 million jobs between 2013 and 2022, it still would fall fairly short of 250 million, which is close to the number of people who will be eligible to work over the stipulated time span.

The report states, “Analyzing about 24 industry reports that were commissioned by the National Skills Development Council (NSDC) as well as similar reports from the end of the last decade, job creation estimates have lowered significantly.”

With the job creation estimates dropping down, earlier forecasts which predicted 654 million working Indians by the end of fiscal year 2022, now shows that the number has dropped significantly to 575 million, which is a devastating news. Similarly, the earlier estimates said that 18% of Indian workforce would be employed in agriculture (about 114 million people), but the new report estimates this number to be at 38% (around 216 million people).

The report added that the implications of the new estimates and the poor job creation trajectory will be harmful for the future of the Indian economy.

"Even with the rate of growth in per-capita income expected to be the highest in agriculture, overall incomes are still so low that the average person engaged in agriculture would barely move beyond the poverty line," the report adds.