By 2015, there won’t be enough jobs going

Generating jobs is getting tougher by the day.

A whopping 55 million new jobs are needed in the next four years to maintain the proportion of employed people in the total population at the current level of 39%, a report by Crisil Research has said.

That’s nearly double the number of jobs created in the 2005-2010 period.

The estimate, based on employment estimates by the National Sample Survey Organisation, takes into account the number of people who would either lose their jobs or retire by 2015.

Job creation has not kept pace with growth in the gross domestic product, which increased to 8.6% during 2005-10, from 6% during 2000-05, said Dharmakirti Joshi, chief economist, Crisil. “The net addition of jobs remained flat at roughly 27 million during these two time periods.”

Achieving the target of 55 million thus appears a herculean task and will require policy support, the report said, adding that reforms in labour and education policies can aid in job creation in the manufacturing and services sectors.

Dilip Chenoy, MD and CEO, National Skill Development Corporation, which is under the Ministry of Finance, feels the youth need to be skilled and trained to suit industry requirements.    

“Only when people are trained in accordance with the industry requirements can they get jobs and can be productive,” said Chenoy.

NSDC is tying up with several players from the private sector to collaborate and provide job related training programmes and placement support to youngsters.

T Muralidharan, MD, TMI e2E Academy, which is doling out training programmes, said the aim is to train 5.28 lakh youngsters, including graduates, undergraduates and class-12 passouts in the next 10 years in sectors like banking, BPOs, financial services and telecom for roles in customer service, sales and back office.

“Starting salary should be minimum Rs 7,000-8,000 per month. Currently, we have training centres in Hyderabad, Pune and Bhopal and we will open centres in each state in future.”

“We have skilled and trained about 7,000 people since April for frontline and sales jobs,” said Navin Bhatia, CEO and director, WorkSkills India. The trained youngsters are helped with placements for jobs which fetch Rs 5,000-6,000 per month.
Still, the efforts are far too small to meet the target of adding 55 million jobs in just four years.

A call to self-employment might, therefore, be in order.
“The small entrepreneurs may not generate thousands of jobs. But even if they end up providing employment to 5-10 people, that goes a long way in addressing issues related to employment,” said Prof Anil K Gupta of IIM Ahmedabad.