Status of Youth’s Employment in Uttar Pradesh: Demographic Dividend or Disaster

The status of youth employment in Uttar Pradesh presents a complex situation that could either lead to a demographic dividend or disaster. While Uttar Pradesh has a large population of young people, which can potentially serve as a valuable resource for economic growth and development, the lack of sufficient job opportunities and low quality of education and skill training programmes have led to a high rate of unemployment. This study during the period, 2004–05 to 2019–20, noted that almost all key labour market indicators such as LFPR, WPR, UR, and NEET witnessed negative changes across gender. During 2019–20 unemployment and NEET rates for youth were 12 and 35% respectively. During the same period, the situation was worse for female youth (NEET rate 60% and UR rate 10%). As far as the quality of employment is concerned, the percentage of youth working as regular workers has increased by two times in Uttar Pradesh. We also observed, there was a significant increment in written job contracts specially for female youth. But on the other hand, social security benefits have gone down for youth in Uttar Pradesh. On the whole we found a mixed picture of the quality of employment for youth.