Path to Progress: Enabling a Smooth Education-to-Employment Transition for India’s Youth

India is home to the world’s largest youth population — approximately 370 million young people between the ages of 15 and 29, a potential that should be driving economic growth and competitiveness. Yet this potential remains largely unrealised. One in four young people is not in education, employment, or training, and employers simultaneously report persistent difficulty finding adequately skilled workers. Left unaddressed, this disconnect risks US$2 trillion in GDP losses over the next decade.

JustJobs Network, supported by JPMorganChase, undertook a study examining the multiple points at which India’s education-to-employment pathway breaks down — from the information gap that leads young people into misaligned training tracks, to the skills gap rooted in outdated curricula and weak foundational learning, to the experience gap caused by the near-total absence of structured employer–institution linkages. Drawing on ground-level evidence from seven civil society organisations working across India, the research distils replicable, system-level insights on what it takes to genuinely improve youth employment outcomes.

This report identifies six interdependent levers for systemic change — aligning training to local labour market demand, embedding career guidance across the education continuum, integrating employability skills into core curricula, strengthening industry–institution partnerships, building trainer capacity, and mobilising families and communities as active partners. Its central finding is that isolated reforms deliver limited results; coordinated, systems-level action is what creates transformative change. The challenge is no longer proving what works — it is scaling it.