Why PhDs want to be peons -Roshan Kishore, Dipti Jain and Ishan Anand

-Livemint.com

Quality employment eludes majority of India’s university educated

Last year, 2.3 million people, including postgraduates and PhDs, applied for 368 peon posts advertised in Uttar Pradesh. Outrage followed. Why were highly educated people applying for a job which required only primary school education and knowing how to ride a bicycle, people asked.

To answer, one needs to find out the jobs people who have been through a university end up in.

According to National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) data, there were around 62 million graduates and postgraduates (we will simply call them graduates and more) in India in 2011-12. Officially, unemployment levels are around 5% for both graduates and postgraduates. However, these numbers need to be taken with a pinch of salt. A PhD holder working as a cultivator—or, for that matter, a peon—is considered to be employed.

NSSO has 10 broad categories of employment in India. Among these, the share of workers who are graduates or more is highest in the professionals category. Broadly speaking, professionals include physical, mathematical, engineering, medical sciences, teaching and other professionals.

Although there is no data on earnings by employment categories, an examination of average monthly per capita consumption expenditure and relative share in consumption (share in total consumption divided by share in population) shows professionals as the most well-off among all categories of workers.

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