Not a cheerful scenario for over 2.6 lakh graduates aspiring for jobs in the State as Odisha almost topped the country with a high of around 15 per cent unemployment rate among graduates in 2014.
Such high unemployment rate among graduates could only be seen in Bihar and north-eastern States in the country. This shows how acute the joblessness among graduates is in a State enriched with natural resources vis-a-vis the north-eastern States. Such a gloomy scenario prevailing in Odisha job market has been brought to fore by the 2014 labour Bureau Report, released recently.
As per the Bureau's report, when the total unemployment rate in 2014 in Odisha has been over 3 per cent, the rates among graduates and postgraduates were abnormally higher at 14.8 per cent and 8.2 per cent, respectively. This reflects the fact that skilled jobs are not on offer in Odisha.
Gradual marginalisation of employment market looks evident as the placements made by employment exchanges in the State has dropped by a whopping 84 per cent during the period 2010-2014.
Sample the crunch. While in 2010 the State employment exchanges had total job-seekers to the tune of 9.4 lakh, placements made through exchanges totalled over 4,480. In the year 2014, the total applicants at the exchanges across the State grew to around 11 lakh, but the placements made were mere 700 only.
It's significant tomention that total jobseekers in employment exchanges in Odisha are much higher than Bihar (8.6lakh) despite lower population in job-seeking age-groups. However, placements made by Bihar stood at 3,600 in 2014. State's shrinking job-market looks clearly evident as the employment in organised sector (public and private) in 2012 had been over 19 lakh compared to mere 4 lakh in Bihar. The lower placements over the years in proportion to organised sector employment in Odisha indicate to the crunch in employment market here.
It needs mentioning that this vast drop in employment in organised sector in Odisha has been attributed to poor rate of job creation by the State Government and State public sector undertakings. Data is clearly evident as from around 6,000 job opportunities notified in public sector in 2001, it shrunk to mere 1,400-1,500 by the year 2014.
The Government's drive to boost job creation through private sector comes a cropper as poor business environment leading to poor income saw the job creation in private sector shrinking to almost a half in 2014 from over 7,000 in 2009-10.
It seems realising the pinch in employment scenario, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik recently directed the departments like Education, Health, Agriculture, Panchayati Raj, Water Resources etc to launch a recruitment drive and fill nearly 40,000 vacancies at the State Government end within 180 days.
This was interpreted by job experts here as the State again taking the lead as job-provider, which was abdicated a decade back following bleak State finances.
However, Patnaik needs to keep in focus the Gujarat case where registration in employment exchanges were mere 7.6 lakh and the placements made were a whopping 2.91lakh and unemployment rate among graduates was a mere 2.6 per cent in 2014, they observed.