Rural youth employment initiatives in India

Abstract

During the period 2004-05 to 2011-12when India’s GDP witnessed an average growth of 8.5%, the number of jobs created were only 15 million which is much lower than the 60 million jobs created during the 5-year period from 2000-2005 when the GDP was on an average 5.7%. About 30% of the jobs created from 1999-2000 & 2004-05 were in the low paying agriculture sector, most of which were distressed jobs. However, in the past few years, people have moved to nonfarm jobs from these distressed jobs, even though the number employed in the farm jobs is still very high. According to the NSSO data, 51% of the Indian work force is now employed off farm with 6.9 million non-farm jobs created between 2005- 12. Although, the rural India still primarily depends on the farm jobs (with 64% employed in farms), a downward trend was observed in this percentage by 8.6 percentage points since 2005. State-wise shift from the non-farm sector to the other sectors can be attributed to sectors like construction and tourism.