This year, India Skills Report which is a joint initiative of Wheebox, a Global Talent Assessment Company, PeopleStrong, a leading HR Tech Company and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and supported and backed by renowned partners like United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and Association of Indian Universities (AIU), stated that Employability continues to rise thus reaching a new high of 47% this year - An incrementalchange of almost 2-3 percentage points since last year and a huge change of over 15% points in the past 5 years.

While in 2014, the percentage of employable population was a paltry 33% and thus this year reaching to 47%. Engineers continue to be the most employable whereas MBA courses lose its shine. As per this year's data 57% of the final year engineering graduates are employable, which is an increase of about 5% points since last year which was 52%.

India Skills Report was launched in Lucknow by the Chief Guest Shri. Dinesh Sharma, Deputy Chief Minister, Uttar Pradesh. Also present were Sougata Roy Choudhry, Head of Skills - Confederation of Indian Industry, Nirmal Singh , Founder & CEO - Wheebox; Arun Nanda, Chairman - Mahindra Holiday and Resorts, Mauro Dell'Ambrogio, State Secretary for Education, Switzerland, Soumitra Bhattacharya, MD - Bosch and Anshuman Srivastava, Vice President - PeopleStrong.

Mr. Nirmal Singh, Founder and CEO of Wheebox, "The increase in employability touching 47% is good sign for the market. But we have a long way to go and entire ecosystem should focus on bridging the employability gaps, enhancing the talent pool thus taking measures from school level to professional level focusing on learning."

He further added that Educational Institutes should focus in identifying the skill gaps amongst the students and Students should explore options of developing their skills which would give them the direction towards their career.

The comprehensive talent demand and supply report is backed by renowned partners like United Nations Development Programme, AICTE, AIU and various state governments. The insights and trends are captured from the largest employability test that was spread out to 5200 Universities and Professional Institutions in India thus reaching out to more than 3 lakh students across 29 states and 7 Union Territories in India. This year, Andhra Pradesh tops the state with highest in employability followed by Rajasthan and Haryana which has made an entry for the first time to the top 10 states; Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Punjab moved out of the last year's list.

It also mentioned that there has been increasing presence of employable talent is in tier 2 and tier 3 cities thus not limiting to metro cities. This trend can be seen in spite of lack of big institutions such as IITs/IIMs or any other renowned institutes in tier 2 and 3 cities. The employability amongst MBA graduates has further dropped by 3 percentage points over last year. (Most of the participants were tier 2 and below colleges).

It seems that with exponential increase in the number of MBA colleges the quality of talent is seen to be declining, which needs government attention. But what came as a surprising was that there has been a drop-in employability of B Pharma graduates this year. While in the past years B Pharma has always been amongst the most employable domains the number a decrease of 12% since last year.

Other Findings Include

The key job areas which the companies would be hiring the most for are: Artificial Intelligence, Design, Analytics, Research and Development. Of which Design jobs would be the most in demand (23% of employers plan to hire for design jobs). This is a common thread across industries - Hospitality, travel, Software, mobile companies are looking for seamless

Experience (UX) for their app/website/software/property users (or visitors) and auto companies are looking for better driving experience.

Engineering and general graduates constituting 45% of total hiring requirements while there would be increase in demand of ITI & management graduates whereas polytechnic graduates would see a drop.

Female employability increased this year as compared to last year. It has increased from 38% last year to 46% in currentyear. Male employability score has grown from 47% last year to 48% in current year.

Almost 70% of freshers expect 2 lacs or more as their first salary & 47% of candidates expects 2.6 L or above as their starting salary.

Almost 40-50% of existing jobs which are transaction heavy would get automated. The key sectors are IT, financial services, manufacturing, transportation, packaging, and shipping, etc.

Job portals and Internal referrals came up as the top 2 most preferred sourcing channels of employers. While until last year, these 3 sources put together were preferred by 70% employers, the number dropped to 63%.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)