Young men in labour market: Unraveling the recent trends | Number Theory

If young men are entering work early at the cost of education, the long-term returns to India’s working-age bulge will be far below potential.

Much of the recent public discussion on India’s labour market has focused on women’s employment patterns. Bucking previous trends, from 2017 onwards, their employment has increased significantly led by agricultural employment. But this is only one side of the equation. Less examined, though equally consequential, is the trajectory of young men: here too employment has risen, but the underlying structure follows a very different pattern. We draw from the latest State of Working India 2026 to discuss some of these in detail.

Domestic workers during a protest over minimum wages, in Noida on Tuesday. (Sunil Ghosh/ HT Photo)

(Yasar Arafath and Rosa Abraham work at the Azim Premji University)

Young men in the labour market: Recent trends

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  Steady decline in share of young men in education

  Quarterly data from PLFS reveals a steady increase in employment rates among both young (15-29 years) men and women. For young men, we see a ten percentage point increase from 46% in 2017 to 56% by the end of 2024. For young women, the corresponding number is an increase from 12% in 2017 to 20%. But there is a major difference between men and women in the source of this increase. While the increase in employment among women is largely due to a reduction in the share who are out of the workforce and who are also not in education, for men, the increase has come largely alongside a reduction in the share in education. The share in education has fallen from 38 percent in 2017 to 34 percent in the last quarter of 2024. The share of 15-19-year-old men in education is also stagnant during the same period indicating that the stagnation in education is seen in the case of secondary education too.
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  What explains young men’s withdrawal from education?

  Individuals aged below 29 years who are not enrolled in education are asked by PLFS for the reasons behind their non-enrollment. In PLFS 2017-18, about 58% of young men indicated that they withdrew so as to “supplement household income”. However, in 2023, the share citing this reason has increased to 72%. The early push of younger males to employment at the cost of education therefore indicates potential economic distress among households.
• 
  Increase in the share of unpaid family work among young graduate men

  Another important and potentially concerning trend among young, educated men is the sharp increase in their share of unpaid family work. Discussions on unpaid family work are largely centered around the women workforce. The share of young (20-29) graduate men engaged in unpaid family work has increased from 15% in 2017 to 21% in 2023. This is accompanied by a reduction in their share in salaried employment which registered a 6% decrease in the same period. Looking deeper into this trend, the report finds that 67% of young unpaid graduates are engaged in agriculture and 25% in services. About 90% of the young unpaid graduates engaged in agriculture had their household heads also engaged in agriculture suggesting that they are working in the family farm or other agricultural activity. This engagement of young graduate men in family unpaid farm work could either be an extended wait (for salaried jobs) or the relinquishing of waiting and an absorption into agricultural activity due to lack of other opportunities.
• 
  Falling real wages among young graduate men

  Real wages of young (20-29) workers have been rising consistently till 2011 regardless of their levels of education. However, post 2011, the PLFS registers a fall in real wages among graduates while it continues to rise among non-graduates. Among graduate women this fall has been arrested in 2017 and has since recovered to 2011 levels. However, a similar reversal is not observed for young graduate men. Taken together, these trends suggest that India’s demographic dividend is at risk of going unrealised for a significant share of its young male workforce. If young men are entering work early at the cost of education, struggling to find formal employment even after graduating, and earning less in real terms, the long-term returns to India’s working-age bulge will be far below potential.