Pathways to Work: Mapping Education, Skills and Employability to Labour Market Demand

25 February 2022
ABOUT THIS Report

This report analyses India’s skills training ecosystem, delineating the challenges and the urgent need for deep reform. It provides recommendations for systemic change in the education-skill ecosystem that will help create a better, more inclusive, and equitable world for work for India’s youth.

India’s economy today is large, open, and more diverse than it has ever been. Yet the country still struggles to deliver on the aspirations of its young people. With roughly 360 million young people between the ages of 15 to 29, and the absence of enough formal jobs to absorb those entering the labour market, policymakers face pressure to productively engage this large and growing youth population. The pandemic is worsening an already grim picture.

The JustJobs Network, in partnership with Quest Alliance, undertook a study analysing India’s existing skills training ecosystem. This research was supported by the Future Right Skills Network. Through a case study of three districts in Gujarat: Ahmedabad, Rajkot and Narmada, the research contributes to understanding how the misalignment between industry expectations and youth aspirations has resulted in large section of skilled and semi-skilled youth being unemployed or underemployed.

The report — Pathways to Work: Mapping Education, Skills and Employability to Labour Market Demand — provides an overview of India’s existing skills training ecosystem, the challenges it faces and the need for deep reform. It reflects how the pandemic is shifting the employment landscape and highlights the need to assess labour market demand so that skills training can be better aligned to industry needs.

Watch the report overview