Jobless and Stuck: Youth Unemployment and COVID-19 in India

Youth unemployment is a big challenge in developing economies, but there is a limited understanding of the dynamics underlying the rise in unemployment among young workers. This article examines youth unemployment and inactivity in India, where the economic contraction from the pandemic was solely responsible for reversing the trend of decades of declining global inequality. Young workers face higher unemployment, have fewer transitions to work, and are more likely to get stuck in unemployment. The pandemic disproportionately pushed young workers out of work and reinforced the pre-existing trends of being more likely to be out of work and stuck in worklessness. Young workers have a strong desire for public employment programmes, with over 80 percent preferring job guarantees among policy options to tackle unemployment in survey experiments. Workers who lose their jobs and become discouraged from finding work afterward are most supportive of a job guarantee.