‘Make in India’ will boost the Indian jobs market

The ‘Make in India’ scheme is aimed to build India a global hub of manufacturing, aimed to raise the share of manufacturing in gross domestic product (GDP) to 25% by 2022. The government has identified 25 key sectors and plans to provide relevant support and incentives to boost investments in them. Some of these sectors include construction, textiles, food processing, and skill-intensive sectors such as aviation, defense equipment manufacturing, and electronics, among others.

Besides friendly policy interventions, people or workforce would form the key element to achieve the desired objectives. Hence, jobs across the levels would be strengthened with addition of multiple set of jobs under this umbrella. While the niche and high-technology oriented profiles would be a value addition to the job roles, management and soft skills roles would go hand in hand as demand from hiring managers. Mass hiring in front line jobs and vocational trades would open a floodgate of opportunity for job seekers.

Important things that need increased focus to keep the momentum rising in the jobs market would be improvement in skill levels of existing employees, properly train the workforce entering the jobs market and innovation in human resource activities like hiring, induction of new employees, retention of existing employees, and effective employee engagement initiatives.

‘Make in India’ is a promising initiative and is expecting the employment scenario to get a boost in the years to come. While this initiative intends to make India a top destination for foreign direct investment, it primarily focuses on job creation and skill enhancement in targeted 25 sectors, with an estimate of 100 million new jobs by 2022.
There is already a positive response to the initiative in the last year. Next year, we estimate another 7-8 lakh temporary jobs to be created. It would also add 8-13 % to the current job pool as investment into manufacturing and related sectors. Refocusing on India's traditional occupations would also add to this and should potentially create 10 million jobs a year.

Key drivers of job generation
Key drivers are foreign direct investment in identified 25 sectors of the economy, which should lead to additional workforce demand. This includes sectors like automobile and its components, chemicals, defense manufacturing, food processing, pharmaceuticals, ports and shipping, textile and garments, tourism, hospitality and wellness. These sectors being the key industry sectors of India, these are in itself the key drivers for job generation.

Levels at which jobs would be created
There will be a huge requirement for entry level jobs for both semi-skilled and skilled workforce. We estimate a rise in the number of young workforce in the age group of 15 to 29 from the current 153 million to 158 million by 2025. There will also be an increase in niche high-technology opportunities demanding specialist skills.

As this initiative touches manufacturing and engineering and related sectors, key skill would be required in the space of design and engineering, project planning, execution, erection, commissioning, operations and maintenance, transmission and distribution, trading and regulatory, renewable energy, and manufacturing.

Most certainly, we see hiring trends and initiatives to change, as there is a huge skill requirement and an obvious skill gap. In the immediate term, investing corporates should upgrade the skilling infrastructure, plan appropriate hiring and quality trainings. Initiatives like structured workforce readiness programs and On the job trainings may help in catering to existing supply and demand gap. We also see a rise in campus and contractual hiring to support the mass hiring needs.