Approximately 80 percent of Indian engineering graduates are not employable in the current knowledge-driven economy, according to a survey.

The survey titled "National Employability report engineers annual report 2019" has been conducted by employability solutions company Aspiring Minds. It is based on sample of more than 170,000 engineering students from over 750 engineering colleges.

Close to 90.92 percent of graduating engineers from India lack the required programming and algorithm skills required to work in IT product companies, the survey added.

Software engineers have a very low employability rate, with only 16.25 percent are employable in IT services and 3.4 percent in IT product companies.

The report noted that only 9.9 percent of engineering graduates in India can code correctly, as opposed to 34.1 percent in the US. In China, only 8.6 percent of engineering graduates can code with a few errors.

Close to 37.7 percent of engineers in India cannot write code that can be compiled by software, far behind 4.1 percent seen in the US and 10.4 percent in China.

"Interestingly, the base of engineering population in the USA is approximately four times smaller than India. In the global talent war, India needs to significantly up its game in IT skills," the survey said.

The percentage of engineers employable in new age skills such as artificial intelligence (AI), mobile, and web development ranges from 1.2-5.3 percent.

"In a world where AI is being increasingly used and helping businesses become differentiated and efficient, this is a big concern. The US and China are marching ahead in AI and India needs to develop a critical mass of engineers with AI skills," the survey said.

The survey also highlighted that only 40 percent engineering students do internships during their course, which is a problem given that engineering is an application-based field.

The government and other policy makers will have to incentivise colleges and the industry to enforce policy changes, the survey added.

The survey said the government needs to intervene and make long-term policy changes to curb the unemployment in the field.

Some measures suggested in the report that could improve the employability of engineering graduates include:

- Incentivise student employability assessment and the disclosure of results.

- Conduct employability assessments and training programs from the first year of university study.

- Higher education should take a programmatic approach to improving student skills.

- Private colleges and universities should start building niche research programs.

- Encourage internship programs and push project-based learning.