Graduates’ Employability Up to 47% in ’19 from 33% in ’14: Survey

Photo used for representational purposes.

(Photo Courtesy: BloombergQuint)

In some good news to the millions graduates and also to the education system in the country as a whole, where for many years as much as 70 percent of the professional degree holders were found to be unemployable, a survey has found that nearly half of the fresh pass-outs are employable now.

The survey, however, does not speak about the jobs scenario given the shape of the economy due to the high capacity underutilisation prevalent in across most industry segments for many years now.

According to the India Skills Report by Wheebox, People Strong and CII, there is an overall positive trend in talent supply as over 46 percent of the students surveyed are found to be employable or ready to take-up jobs in 2019 against only 33 percent in 2014.

"There is an improvement in the availability of employable talent at around 47 percent in 2019 up from 33.9 percent in 2014," Wheebox founder and chief executive Nirmal Singh said.

The most employable candidates are MBA passouts with 54 percent of them being found employable against 40 percent in two years ago, it said, adding BPharma, polytechnic, BCom and BA graduates have also seen an improvement in their employability which has increased by over 15 percent.

However, there has been a decline in the employability those coming out with BTech, other engineering streams, MCA, technical and computer-related courses, says the survey.

The survey is based on a study by the talent management specialisit Wheebox which has conducted the national employability test survey from July-November 2019 with more than 3 lakh participants from 3,500 educational institutions across the country.

Further, Maharashtra tops among the states in highest employability followed by Tamil Nadu, UP, Andhra and Karnataka.

Mumbai is ranked at the top, followed by Hyderabad in terms of the most employable cities. Bengaluru, New Delhi, Pune, Lucknow and Chennai have maintained their presence in the top 10 list over the past six years.

States those saw a dip in their ranking are Bengal and Haryana, which could not make it into the top 10 list.

The survey finds the employability scores amongst men and women both are at par. The talent pool of women can be found in Telangana, Rajasthan and Delhi. While at the city level, Hyderabad, Ghaziabad and Visakhapatnam are in the top three to have the most employable women talent pool.