A Reuters survey of economists found the majority to say that the biggest challenges for the Indian government post-election will be addressing unemployment. This is matched with sentiment on the ground: a CSDS-Lokniti survey found the largest concern for voters is unemployment, with 29% saying it was their foremost voting issue. 

While India enjoys a moderately low unemployment rate of 4.7% in 2023, significantly lower than 8% a decade ago, half of India’s working-age population is out of work, as seen in the country’s starkly low labor force participation rate of 51%. For context, China has a 76% participation rate, while the United States’ is 62%. Partially driven by India’s inability to get women in the workforce — 25% of India’s women work, while even neighboring Pakistan and Bangladesh have higher labor participation rates from women — India also struggles to employ workers that are too low-skilled for the service economy (think technology and IT) jobs the country’s leaders hope will drive employment growth; India’s literacy rate is 74% compared to China’s 97%.

However, India also struggles to attract high-paying jobs for its fast-growing educated populace. India’s premier technology universities located in major metro hubs, called IITs, graduate some of the most talented youth of the country. Still, over 1 of 3 IIT graduates were unable to find a job in 2024.

Another telling sign of India’s employment crisis is that low-paying civil service jobs (called “peons”), which require no more than an elementary school education, often receive millions of applications from those far too qualified. When the northern Indian state Uttar Pradesh posted a job for 368 peon jobs; 2.3 million applied, including thousands of PhD holders. In another case, hundreds of doctors and lawyers were interviewed for a peon job in the northwestern Indian state of Rajasthan.