Employment crisis and decent work deficits for youth in India

India has a rising proportion of the working-age population driven by a youth bulge. The youth bulge has the potential to productively contribute to the growth of an economy if desired employment opportunities are available in the labour market. The paper presents the structure and nature of employment for youth and identifies the youth labour market challenges with respect to employment generation and quality of employment. We find that employment generated in labour intensive and productive non-primary sectors has not taken place at the required pace. The slow employment generation has affected youth more than adults. There has been an overall job loss in absolute numbers among youth from 2004–2005 to 2017–2018 despite reasonably high economic growth. The challenge of employment quality is as severe as employment quantity in India. There is a predominance of low quality of employment among youth characterized in terms of the lack of access to decent work. Most of the young workforce is informal, trapped in low pay, without job contract, and has less access to social security benefits. The inability of the economy to generate sufficient and decent employment opportunities for the youth will affect leveraging the demographic dividend and has several social and developmental consequences.