47% of Indian graduates unemployable: study

India churns out tens of thousands of graduates each year but less than half of them are actually "employable" or possess the basic skills necessary for any industry role, according to a report by an employment solutions firm, PTI reports.

The firm Aspiring Minds, said around 47 per cent graduates in India were not employable for any job, according to PTI.

The report, touted as the first ever national audit of employability of 3-year Bachelor's degree graduates, studied data of over 60,000 graduates pan-India, based on Aspiring Minds Computer Adaptive Test (AMCAT).

According to Aspiring Minds co-founder Varun Aggarwal, the alarming statistics of nearly half of the country's graduates not being employable in the knowledge economy needed great attention with interventions at both the school and higher education levels.

The employability of graduates varied between 2.59 per cent in functional roles such as accounting, to 15.88 per cent in sales related roles and 21.37 per cent for roles in the business process outsourcing (BPO/ITeS) sector.

The percentage of graduates, not suitable for employment in any sector was around 47 per cent due to their insufficient English language and cognitive skills.

According to the report, since a graduation degree was considered a pathway to a job in the knowledge economy, substantive intervention at school and college level was needed for improvement of skills of students.

Further, a renewed focus on vocational training was timely now and needed to be re-emphasised.

The employability varied from role to role based on varying degrees of proficiency required in language and cognitive skills.

For the role of an analyst, close to 84 per cent graduates were found to lacking in cognitive ability, while 90 per cent graduates lacked the required proficiency in English communication.

Over 40 per cent of employable graduates came from colleges not among the top 30 per cent colleges and had no way of singalling their employability to potential recruiters, while 41 per cent of graduates employable in accounting roles had graduated from colleges beyond the top 30 per cent colleges. For the IT services sector the corresponding figure was 36 per cent.

Despite being employable, these students had no way to signal their employability to recruiters who tended to confine their search to reputed colleges and universities.