Ayesha Ahmed

As India’s working age population expands, the need to create productive and future ready jobs at scale is pertinent. This report maps employment growth in India between 2018 and 2025 using the Periodic Labor Force Survey with an eye towards illuminating occupation-level job growth patterns, the changing skill profile of the Indian workforce and exposure to AI developments. Overall, we find that employment has expanded since 2018, though much of the increase was in agricultural self-employment and low-skill nonfarm occupations. Our analysis provides evidence for job polarization - job growth was concentrated in low-skilled occupations coupled with modest growth in some high-skilled professional roles, with relatively no growth in medium-skill jobs. High-skilled, cognitive occupations are most exposed to emerging AI applications. So far, employment growth has been pronounced at both ends of the AI-exposure range. Manual, low-skill jobs, which are least-exposed to AI grew tremendously while high-skilled job grew to a lesser extent, resulting in the missing middle and echoing the broader polarization of the labor market. These findings draw policy attention towards the need for industry-relevant skills that enhance productivity and boost the AI-adaptability. Building data infrastructure that captures evolving worker and job characteristics is important to produce timely and relevant evidence that supports policy in times of technological change.