Unemployment: The 12-Letter Word Bihar’s Election Discourse Ignores

Bihar, October 15, 2025: As Bihar inches closer to elections, experts, observers and self-proclaimed psephologists are dissecting every party’s “strategy” and “stance”. Over the coming weeks, everyone — from your neighbour to your college-going niece — will become an election analyst. Amid all this chatter, a crucial issue is once again sidelined — a 12-letter word that seldom gets the attention it deserves: unemployment.

Gautam Sharma (name changed), a soft-spoken young man in his twenties, drives for a ride-hailing company. “I never thought I’d be doing this,” he says. “I wanted to be a web analyst. I even earned a BTech degree, but I couldn’t crack college placements. My first job barely covered rent and basic expenses. Now I earn about ₹40,000 a month driving — much more than before.”

India faces one of its gravest challenges — the unemployment of the educated. In 2017, more than 12,000 people applied for 18 peon posts in Rajasthan, including engineers, lawyers, and chartered accountants. By 2024, over 46,000 graduates and postgraduates had applied for contractual sanitation jobs in Haryana.

Consider this: a student spends four years and nearly ₹10 lakh at a premier government college, only to graduate jobless. In 2024, two out of every five IIT graduates went unplaced. This pattern extends to NITs, IIITs, and other top institutions. Government data reveals that over one in ten graduates and postgraduates were unemployed last year — one in five among women.

Every year, 70–80 lakh young Indians join the workforce. But where are the white-collar, decently paid jobs? Even as corporate profits hit a 15-year high, companies are cutting staff. Three leading IT firms together shed about 64,000 jobs in FY24. The pace of net white-collar job growth among India’s top four companies has nearly halved in the last five years.

A hiring platform reports that four out of five engineering graduates and nearly half of business school students lack even an internship offer. The Prime Minister’s Internship Scheme aimed to provide one crore internships in top firms, but fewer than 5 per cent of applicants secured one.

Officially, the unemployment rate hovers around 4–6 per cent. However, educated youth make up two-thirds of the jobless. A Reuters survey of 50 leading economists found that 70 per cent believe the government’s unemployment data underestimates the crisis — largely because the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) counts anyone who works even an hour per week as “employed”.

Educated unemployment also explains stagnant wages. A leading HR officer admitted that fresh graduates’ salaries have stagnated at ₹3–4 lakh annually for years. In 2020, the average engineer earned ₹33,000 per month. The Economic Survey 2025 showed that salaried men earned ₹395 per day, women ₹295.

A FICCI report commissioned by the government revealed sluggish wage growth across key sectors between 2019 and 2023: IT (4% CAGR), banking and finance (2.8%), and manufacturing (0.8%). Even among highly skilled professionals, nominal salary growth averaged just 5% between 2020 and 2023 — while inflation rose 18%.

The crisis has taken a tragic toll. According to the NCRB’s Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India report, over 12,000 private-sector employees and 14,000 unemployed people died by suicide in 2023 — that’s 73 lives lost every day.

PS: Watch Homebound — an outstanding film by Neeraj Ghaywan, based on the true story of two boys from rural north India seeking work and dignity.

Unemployment: The 12-Letter Word Bihar’s Election Discourse Ignores

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