This World Youth Skills Day
, we share a recap of our recently concluded conference “Towards an Inclusive Job Market in India—Unpacking Opportunities and Challenges”, conducted in New Delhi.
We organised this conference with the goal of bringing together policymakers, researchers, and members of the civil society to explore strategies that have the potential to make India’s job market more inclusive. The recently released Periodic Labour Force Survey 2020-21
points to the shift towards informal work and poor working conditions, spotlighting the need to address employment issues in a holistic manner.
Some of the ideas discussed in the conference include tackling youth unemployment through skills training programmes, unpacking internal migration patterns to inform social protection programmes, and boosting female labour force participation through both supply- and demand-side interventions.?
We summarise the key takeaways from the three panels below:
How can we spur youth employment: Lessons from DDU-GKY
The first panel—Improving matching and retention in skill development programmes and jobs: Insights from 3 years of research on the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana (DDU-GKY)—discussed strategies to improve the outcomes of skill development programmes such as DDU-GKY as well as the effects of Covid-19.?
- J-PAL affiliated researcher Clément Imbert (University of Warwick) presented results from a randomised evaluation conducted with trainees of DDU-GKY in Bihar and Jharkhand. The evaluation found that providing detailed information to the participants on prospective jobs can be a low-cost way to enhance job retention.?
- Bhaskar Chakravorty (University of Warwick) presented results from a panel survey tracking employment and migration patterns among rural youth in the two states. The survey found that Covid-19 pushed young workers, particularly men, into informal jobs, while many women stopped looking for jobs altogether. Return migration also increased.
- Chakravorty also presented results from a second randomised evaluation of an app-based digital platform called YuvaSampark in Jharkhand. The evaluation found no significant impact on rural youth searching for jobs or submitting job applications, indicating the need to think more about the design of digital solutions for such jobseekers.?
Abhinav Bakshi (Jharkhand State Livelihoods Promotion Society) and Sanjay Kumar (Bihar Rural Livelihoods Promotion Society)—both of whom have worked closely with the researchers on the evaluations—reflected on the strengths and the weaknesses of DDU-GKY.?
- Bakshi said job counselling has successfully resulted in bringing back most of the scheme’s candidates to the training centres in Jharkhand, and the state is adopting new features to help candidates adapt to the post-Covid job market.?
- Kumar shared his experience on challenges in relation to DDU-GKY such as difficulty in identifying qualified trainers, mismatches in post-training job expectations, the motivations of candidates, and quality of available jobs.?
How can we create conditions for safe migration for workers?
The second panel—Internal migration in India: Drivers and policy responses—focused on the need to understand the differences in migration patterns across regions.?
- Priya Deshingkar (University of Sussex) discussed her work advising the NITI Aayog’s Draft Migration Policy prepared in 2021, and how it is a crucial step in supporting migrants at a national level. She also emphasised on the need for better targeting of social protection programmes to include non-unionised migrants and migrants without contracts. She highlighted that the complex nature of migration requires a multidisciplinary research approach to understand ways in which migration decisions are made, which can help design more sophisticated interventions to support them.?
- Arindam Banerjee (Policy and Development Advisory Group) built on his work with the Government of Jharkhand’s Safe and Responsible Migration Initiative, highlighting the need for states to create a framework for inter-state coordination in recording and sharing data on migrant workers. Banerjee said such a framework is an important first step to help migrant workers secure welfare benefits.?
- Finally, Kanhu Pradhan (Centre for Policy Research) highlighted an understudied issue of migration patterns in small- and medium-sized cities, which experience localised in-migration, but long-distance out-migration. Through his study, he stressed the need for tailoring policies to the nature of migration patterns at the city, state, and national levels.??
Bringing more people into the workforce: What can governments, firms, and workers do??
The final panel—Looking forward: Implications for promoting inclusion in the labour market in India—discussed multi-pronged strategies to improve employment among workers who face greater difficulties in accessing jobs.?
- Anisha Sharma (Ashoka University) discussed her ongoing research on how women make employment choices, highlighting the role of improving workplace safety, and strategies to shift women’s early investment choices in education and skills so they are able to work in jobs in which they have traditionally remained under-represented.?
- Gaurav Chiplunkar (University of Virginia) drew on his work in Tamil Nadu to explain the utility of job portals in understanding the various steps and preferences men and women show while looking for jobs, which can inform new interventions as well. In the Tamil Nadu study, women searched and applied for jobs less despite accessing the job portal, and were less flexible about job locations and migration.?
- Chiplunkar also discussed barriers faced by women entrepreneurs in starting and expanding businesses, which can affect the demand for labour.?
- Smit Gade (Good Business Lab) discussed evidence on interventions such as financial literacy and mental health programmes to support women at the workplace.
- The panellists also stressed on the need to address large-scale unemployment among lower socioeconomic classes. Policy options may yield different results based on the social locations of target groups, which makes it important to incorporate interventions which respond to needs specific to different income and caste groups.
Stay tuned for the full video recordings of all the panels and a blog post discussing the lessons and insights from the conference in greater detail.?
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