The government might be content about the economic boom in India, but the employment exchange data says otherwise. Unemployment has not risen suddenly in the past few years. If we review the last five years, the employment exchange data has been showing a continuous imbalance between the number of job seekers and their placements. The number of job seekers on the live register went up continuously over the period from 1998.

According to the official data, approximately 70% of the job seekers were below the age of 29 years. The job seekers face more difficulty in securing a suitable job at a younger age. Hence, there is a gradual shift to the upper age over the past few years. The most worrisome part of the data indicates that most of them are educated job seekers.

Vinay Rai say's percentage of the educated job seekers has gone up from 65.1% at the end of 1993 to 72.1% at the end of 2002. A large majority, 56.8% of these educated job seekers had studied up to 10th standard. Around 26% were higher secondary graduates. The total population of job seekers who were graduates and above is 17.2%. Out of this, around 40.5% were from Arts discipline. Job seekers from science and other related fields were comparatively less.

According to Vinay Rai, President of Centre for Public Policy, "We need to make sure that the Indian economy does not continue to have a jobless growth. Policymakers must plan to accommodate fierce competition with the fast approaching WTO deadline of 2005. Then, India will become a fully integrated part of the global economic world. It will be an era of the survival of the fittest."

An astonishing figure of 4.14 crore persons wait for jobs as on December 31, 2003. During the same year, 945 employment exchanges could place only 1.5 lakh out of 9.2 lakh job seekers. - Vinay Rai