Elusive jobs: how AI will demand even greater patience of India’s unemployed youth

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.India’s unemployment debate is missing a crucial dimension: time. Time spent waiting is a loss at any age, but especially so in one’s youth. For both the individual and the country, it is a loss of prime productive years.Last year, 11.6 million Indians in their 20s were unemployed and about 6.8 million of them had been job hunting for over a year.

The long wait may not necessarily reflect a shortage of jobs, but a mismatch between the jobs on offer and what young Indians aspire to. These numbers understate the full picture: another 78 million in the same age group were not looking for work at all as per our estimates based on the Periodic Labour Survey data for 2025.In Rajasthan, Assam, Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal, two-thirds or more of unemployed young adults in their 20s were looking for work for over a year. In Bihar, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, more than half of unemployed young adults were in the same category.

In Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat—states with diversified manufacturing and services economies—unemployment durations under and over a year split roughly evenly. Kerala shows a similar pattern, though possibly for different reasons: many young people may have already migrated to other states and abroad. In terms of the overall unemployment rate, about 10% of young Indian adults in their 20s were unemployed last year.

This does not include around 40% who were not even looking for a job. Unexpectedly, states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal have lower-than-average unemployment rates among people in their 20s. However, this does not necessarily reflect labour market success.