33% of India's skilled youth jobless: official survey -Ishan Anand & Anjana Thampi

-Livemint.com

Four out of 10 youth who received vocational training are out of the labour force, and a significant chunk of those in the workforce remain unemployed

Reiterating the government’s commitment to the 'Skill India' initiative in her maiden budget speech, India’s finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman claimed that the government is enabling millions to take up industry-relevant skill training, boosting their job prospects.

An analysis of the unit-level data from the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) 2017-18 however suggests that the reality is far more grim. Only a small section of the youth reported receiving any vocational training, and a large share of them were either unemployed or out of the labour force, the data shows.

Nationally, only 1.8% of the population reported receiving formal vocational/technical training in 2017-18. 5.6% reported receiving informal vocational training (such as hereditary, self-learning, and on the job training). This means 93% of the population did not receive any vocational/technical training from either formal or informal sources.

The youth (15-29 years) comprised more than half of the people who received formal vocational/technical training.

One would imagine that the young population with ‘industry-relevant’ formal vocational training would have better job prospects. But about 42% of the youth (15-29 years) who received formal technical training were not part of the labour force at all (i.e., they were not working or seeking employment opportunities, they reported). Among youth who did not receive such training, 62.3% were out of the labour force. Across age groups, substantial shares of the women who received such training were out of the labour force.

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