By 2022, 37% of Indian workforce to be employed in new job roles: Jobs report

In the next 15 years, about 37 percent of Indian workforce will be employed in new job roles. According to a joint survey by FICCI and NASSCOM on‘Future of Jobs in India’ with EY, employment in the organized manufacturing and services sector is expected to increase from the current 38 million to 46-48 million by 2022.

The report provides insights into the future of jobs and vision of change for the job market in India by 2022. The report highlights the impact that various primary forces such as globalization, demographics, and industry 4.0/exponential technologies, are expected to have on the key sectors of the economy. It also provides an overview of the job creation rates across various sectors and the new jobs that will emerge in the next few years.

It said that the future of jobs in 2022 would be determined by the country’s response to 12 mega-trends captured by the EY framework, which includes, under globalization the level of exports of India-based companies, rapid adoption of exponential technologies in the advanced markets and its impact on offshoring, FDI inflow levels and  increasing/shrinking overseas job market for Indian workforce.

Other factors include increasing urbanization, rising middle-class, new work arrangements and launch of smart connected products/services among others.

R Chandrasekhar, President, NASSCOM, said, “The report attempts to present a 2022 picture – a time when no one can afford to ‘rest on one’s laurels’ but needs a continuous learning culture."

He added that another important fact being seen is that non-tech firms are increasingly emerging as the source of information technology roles; for eg. automotive, aerospace, BFSI, telecom, retail, healthcare, etc.”

Anurag Malik, Partner - People & Organization, Advisory Services, EY, said, “The adoption of exponential technologies is disrupting industries by creating new markets and India is at the cusp of this change."

Malik said that the rapid embracing of these exponential technologies by Indian companies has the potential to transform highly unorganized sectors, such as transportation, maintenance, food catering, and software development services, into organised ones.

The changed job landscape in 2022

All the new forms of employment are expected to add a further 20-25 percent to the workforce of the current defined 'organized' sector in 2022. This would increase the share of the organized sector in the overall economy to 10 percent from current level of 8 percent, i.e. approximately 60 million in a workforce of 600 million.

The new forms of employment would include contract employees in infrastructure sector, micro entrepreneurs supported by MUDRA schemes, employer–entrepreneurs in technology enabled employment models, freelance workers on online platform models, among others. Further, 'Uber' workers, SME and artisan entrepreneurs on ecommerce platforms, delivery workers and service providers in the ecommerce ecosystem, employees in tech start-ups would be new areas.