Webinar by Basit Abdullah

Topic: Relative Occupational Aspirations and Youth Unemployment in India

Presenter: Mr. Basit Abdullah

Co-authors: Prof. Vinoj Abraham,Dr. Ritika Jain

Moderator: Prof. K N Harilal

Abstracts:

An often discussed but less researched dimension of youth unemployment is the aspirations associated with jobs, and the mismatch between employment aspirations and their realization. In this paper, we attempt to explore the misalignment between employment aspirations and the reality of labour market as a factor responsible for higher incidence of unemployment among youth. Following the framework of socially determined aspirations, we argue that the employment aspirations are largely shaped by the relevant cohort to which a person belongs in a society spatially, economically and socially. Using nationally representative large scale data (Periodic Labour Force Survey, 2017-18 and 2018-19), we build a measure of relative occupational aspirations based on the individual’s own and cohort’s education and occupation levels. We find that youth as compared to adult population and females compared to male youth have higher relative occupational aspirations gap (ROAG). ROAG is higher among tertiary educated youth. We use multinomial and binomial probit estimation to analyze the determinants of youth labour market outcomes. The results indicate that ROAG has a positive and significant effect on the probability of youth being unemployed. The effect of ROAG is higher for females than male youth. We argue that increasing education raises job-related expectations and aspirations. As such, it is the discrepancy between desired and available employment opportunities that cause higher unemployment among youth. An effective policy approach requires creation of better quality jobs that match the aspirations of young educated labour force. However, skill-development strategies targeting youth are needed to address the challenge of skill shortages for high-skilled jobs.