A Study on Changing Profile of Unemployed and Underemployed in India and Ways and Means to Address These Issues

Abstract

Indian economy has witnessed remarkable growth surge during the last two decades. Moreover, it has turned out to be the fastest growing economy in the world in 2016 (Das et al., 2015). Yet, lack of adequate job creation is still a major problem for many economies. Job creation is an essential aspect of economic development, and it has been one of the major policy priorities for national governments and international agencies. Moreover, under-employment is considered as more severe issue than unemployment in India. Each of the five year plans, without any exception, has focused on employment generation as one of top plan priorities and important policy imperative. Each plan, as a consequence, had come up with a number of employment generation schemes for rural as well as urban areas. However, the menace of unemployment has continued to bother planners and policy makers alike. Owing to emphasis on economic growth based on labor-intensive activities, for a very long time, employment growth was an obvious outcome of economic development.