It was July, when over 15,000 youths reportedly braved Mumbai’s muggy weather, vying for about 1,800 job openings. The walk-in interview was conducted by AI Airport Services Ltd for the posts of handyman and utility agent, which required candidates to be at least 10th pass and offered a salary of a little over Rs 22,000 per month.
However, a union of aviation employees said that the number of candidates was higher—at least 50,000. A video of utter chaos and crowd mismanagement was widely shared on the internet then.
In August, Mumbai Police received 5.8 lakh applications for 4,230 vacancies. This meant, at least 135 candidates were vying for one job opening — a hypercompetition that underscores the situation of unemployment in the state. These instances are not few and far between. In June too, Maharashtra police received 17.76 lakh applications for 17,471 constabulary posts from across the state.
Now with Maharashtra headed for Assembly elections on 20 November, nearly a quarter (24%) of the voters in the state have identified unemployment as a primary issue, as per a pre-poll survey conducted by MIT-SOG-Lokniti-CSDS.
As the Mahayuti (comprising BJP, Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar’s NCP) prepares to lock horns with the Maha Vikas Aghadi (comprising Congress, Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena and Sharad Pawar’s NCP) in the elections, let’s look at Maharashtra’s joblessness situation:
2.46 Lakh Govt Job Posts Lying Vacant
Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR) is defined as the number of people in the labour force (employed as well as those looking for jobs) as a percentage of the total population.
Maharashtra’s LFPR stands at 63.9% in FY24, with a stark gender gap in both rural and urban areas. It is marginally lower than the nation-wide average of 64.3 percent.
As of 31 December 2023, 84.70 lakh people were employed in Maharashtra—the lion’s share (72.2%) in private jobs, according to the state’s economic survey. Of the total 85 lakh jobs, women are employed in merely 28.5 percent jobs.
As far as government jobs are concerned, of the 7.24 lakh sanctioned posts in Group A to D, 33.9 percent—or 2.46 lakh posts—are lying vacant. In July, Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis promised filling at least one lakh seats if the BJP wins and after the new Mahayuti government is formed.
In Maharashtra, a good 61.6 percent of the people in the 15-59 years age group—which means two in every three persons—are part of the workforce, that is they are either employed or looking for work. The distribution of work, although is different in rural and urban areas.
While the majority of workers in rural Maharashtra are engaged in self-employment, in urban areas most workers are regular-salaried employees.
67.5% of rural workers are engaged in agriculture and allied activities, while in urban areas workers are engaged in manufacturing, retail, construction and transportation. Only 9.9 percent of the workforce is employed in government service.
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Unemployment Highest Among Graduates
Maharashtra’s total unemployment rate, among people in the 15-59 years age group, stands at 3.6 percent in FY24. Interestingly, unemployment rate is high in urban areas, and highest among urban women in Maharashtra.
If we consider a younger population—in the 15-29 years age group—the unemployment rate is higher at 10.8 percent in FY 24. And a more worrying trend shows that unemployment rate is the highest among graduates (11.3%), followed by postgraduates (8.3%) and those with diploma/certificate courses (7.0%).
Even though Maharashtra’s Literacy Rate (87.3%) is higher than the national average—with a little over half the state’s people (aged 15 years and above) receiving at least secondary level education, unemployment has been consistently high among graduates.
While announcing the state Budget in July this year, Shinde had allocated Rs 5,500 crore on an internship scheme for unemployed youth. “The government will extend Rs 6,000 to those who are 12th pass, Rs 8,000 to those with ITI and diploma and Rs 10,000 for those with degree and postgraduation as a stipend,” Shinde reportedly said at a public event in Pandharpur.
Another alarming trend is that 63.5 percent employees in urban Maharashtra do not have a written contract, while 37.3 percent are not eligible for paid leave — an indicator of an increasing shift towards contractual hiring, underemployment as well as more workers joining the gig economy.
Have Govt Schemes to Generate Jobs Been Successful?
While there are many central and state schemes to boost employment in Maharashtra, their success is arguable. For instance:
MGNREGA: The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005, which guarantees a minimum 100 days of waged employment to do unskilled manual work in rural areas.
Yet, the average days of employment created in FY 24, although more than FY 23, is still less than half (47 days) of the guaranteed minimum 100 days of work. This is despite the expenditure incurred to create jobs doubling between FY23 and FY24.
The condition is especially difficult for those belonging to Scheduled Caste (SC) communities, as they receive only 6.9 percent of work generated through MGREGA, a share which has dipped in the last three years.
For Scheduled Tribe (ST) communities too, the share of work has dipped each year to be at 17.3 percent in FY24. Earlier, The Quint had reported that tribal women from Vasantwadi village in Palghar district had returned sarees received under PM Garib Kalyan Yojana in protest to demand jobs.
2. Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana – National Urban Livelihood Mission: It aims to make urban poor households accessible to self-employment and waged job opportunities.
Funds allocated to this scheme by the Central government as well as the Eknath Shinde-led Mahayuti government have decreased by 40 percent in the last three years.
3. PM Employment Generation Programme: It aims to generate jobs for traditional artisans and unemployed youth so as to reduce migration to urban areas.
The number of jobs generated through the scheme have reduced to nearly half – from 33,000 in FY22 to over 15,000 in FY 24.
The state government organised job fairs to provide jobs to skilled youth. But, even as the number of youth participating in these job fairs soared, only 37.2 percent received jobs in FY24.
Earlier this month, Uddhav Thackeray attended a job fair organised by his party’s MLC Anil Parab in Mumbai. Sena (UBT) MLA Aditya Thackeray, who was also present, reportedly promised to organise job fairs every four months and accused Shinde of “sending many industries to a neighbouring state.”
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