With more graduates in workforce, Tamil Nadu struggles with a skills gap

Tamil Nadu's employment landscape analyzed, highlighting underemployment, skill gaps, and efforts to bridge the education-employment mismatch.

Tamil Nadu fares better than most States on employment metrics, but more must be done to tackle underemployment and gaps between skills and education, as the State produces the highest number of graduates in India.

While there is no accurate data to measure India’s employment scenario, the periodic labour force survey (PLFS) conducted by the Union Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation offers some insights.

The annual PLFS from July 2022-June 2023 measured different aspects of employment across States and nationwide. Among the sample population, it considered the activity in which a person spent relatively long time during 365 days preceding the date of survey as the principal activity status, while the economic activity performed for 30 days or more, adding to the principal status was considered the subsidiary economic status.

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Put together the principal and subsidiary economic status, that is, Tamil Nadu’s (T.N.) labour force participation rate (LFPR), which is the percentage of persons in the labour force - those working, or seeking, or available to work - was 46%, compared with 42.4% nationally. 

Under the principal plus subsidiary status, the percentage of employed persons, or Worker Population Ratio (WPR) in T.N. was 44%, compared with 41.1% nationally. The female WPR was 31.6%, higher than the 27% nationally.

In T.N. 31.6% earned a regular wage, compared with 20.9% nationally.