India needs to overcome obstructions to increase quality, quantity of workforce participation: NCAER

12 Dec 2025 Evaluate

National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in its latest report titled ‘India's Employment Prospects: Pathways to Jobs’ has said that India needs to overcome obstructions to increase both quality and quantity of workforce participation and labour productivity in sectors. It noted that India, which has large youth population, yet not been able to capitalise on the demographic dividend. The youth workforce participation in India is below compared to that of international trend. Further, the manufacturing sector’s contribution to employment has been mostly stagnant with most of the labour that has shifted away from agriculture being absorbed by the services sector.

The report showed that there is need to increase the share of the skilled workforce by percentage points through investment in formal skilling, which will generate 9.3 million jobs, amounting to a nearly 9 per cent increase in employment in the labour-intensive sectors by 2030. On average, labour-intensive manufacturing accounts for 44.1 per cent of total manufacturing employment, while labour-intensive services account for 54.2 per cent of total services employment. Combined, labour-intensive sectors constitute 51.3 per cent of total employment in manufacturing and services.

As per the report, to achieve an aggregate GVA growth rate of 8 per cent by 2030, the manufacturing and services sectors need to at 8.2 per cent and 9.0 per cent annually. This can be accomplished with the help of higher investment in labour-intensive manufacturing and services. Further, achieving a GVA growth of 8 per cent could lead to significant employment generation across sectors. Moreover, GVA can grow at even higher growth rate of around 9 per cent, if the manufacturing sector grows at 10.7 per cent, and the services sector at 9.6 per cent. This higher growth can be achieved if the Viksit Bharat agenda is effectively implemented, with policies aimed at enhancing sectoral GVA growth. 

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