NEW DELHI: Opening a window to the turbulence in people’s productive lives, recently released Census 2011 data shows that nearly 120 million people were “seeking or available for work”. That’s nearly 11% of the population excluding under-5 children. Slightly over half of these were not working at all while the remaining were marginal workers, that is, working for less than six months a year.

What is more worrying is that the brunt of this unemployment or under-employment is being borne by the youth, with educated youth suffering the most. Nearly a quarter of those aged 20 to 24 years were seeking jobs, while in the 25 to 29 years age group job seekers numbered 17 percent.

Those in the crucial early phase of adult life, between 20 to 34 years of age, make up a mind boggling 47 percent of the whole army of job seekers in India. Of the entire population aged 20 or more, about 718 million, one-fifth or 143.8 million were seeking jobs.

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This Census data also sheds some more light on another dark area in India’s employment scenario – women’s employment. Women constitute nearly 60% of non-workers who are seeking or available for work. This blows apart the myth that women prefer to remain involved in domestic duties and do not want to work. In fact women make up nearly half of all job seekers while their share in the employed workforce is just 31%.

The share of those seeking or available for work is nearly 15% among those who are educated up to secondary or matriculation level and beyond. These include technical graduates who are nearly 16% of job seekers, and non-technical graduates seeking work, which make up about 14%.

The biggest chunk of nearly 27 million people is of job seekers who have done matriculation or secondary level but not completed graduation. They constitute about 14% of the total 190 people at this educational level in the country.

The proportion of job seekers is highest among those with a diploma or certificate in technical courses, provided by Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) and polytechnics. They constitute nearly 17% of all similarly qualified technical persons. This points to the dire need for better concord between industry and technical training institutions at this level.

A disturbing feature of the job seekers is that among the more educated categories, the numbers are heavily dominated by non-workers rather than marginal workers. Among job seeking graduates, 78% were non-workers while among the matriculates 70% were non-workers. This indicates that as people get educated, they prefer to wait and get more suitable jobs rather than take up marginal jobs.

As reported earlier by TOI, the proportion of marginal workers among all workers in the country has zoomed up by 34% between 2001 and 2011 to reach 119 million. That’s close to one job in four. This rise is all the more marked in urban areas where marginal jobs increased by an astounding 94% in that period. So, while more educated people might tend to mark some time seeking better prospects, a very large number of them– some 10 million – finally end up doing marginal work.