Women Employment

The unemployment rate rises up to almost 40 per cent for educated young adults under the age of 25, according to the State of Working India report published by Azim Premji University.

For graduates over the age of 35, it dropped to less than 5 per cent which shows that graduates finally do find employment, but the nature of an occupation remains in question.

It also noted that post-Covid, unemployment is decreasing across all educational levels. However, it continues to be above 15 per cent for graduates, and more concerningly, it reaches a staggering 42 per cent for recent graduates. On the other end of the spectrum, it is between 2 and 3 percent for older, less educated workers.

Further, it encapsulated the social factors weighing on the employment patterns across caste and gender. It finds that owners of companies with more than 20 employees are hardly belong to SC or ST and the over-representation of the higher caste also rises with the size of the firm. Between the two extremes are the OBCs.

 “Self-employment and women SC/ST employees experience the greatest income inequality. In salaried employment, women make 76 per cent of what males make on average; this percentage reduces to 40 per cent for self-employed individuals,” it stated.

It showed that women are also more likely to work outside the home in areas with a higher percentage of major businesses (those employing more than 10 people). When individual and household factors are taken into account, data also reveals that the likelihood of the wife having a job is low in households where the husband earns a high income. Although the religious disparity is smaller than the caste divide (SC/ST – Others), it is still similar at 76 per cent. More pronounced inequities develop where caste and gender overlap. Only 54 per cent of what women from upper castes make in waged work is earned by SC/ST women.