55% Indian grads to be globally employable in 2025, says CII report

Nearly 55 per cent of Indian graduates are expected to be globally employable in 2025, up from 51.2 per cent in 2024, showing India’s emerging role in addressing global workforce demand, the latest ‘India Skills Report 2025’ released on Tuesday said.

 

The report prepared by industry body Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) in collaboration with Wheebox and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) notes that management graduates (78 per cent) has highest global employability, followed by engineering students (71.5 per cent), MCA students (71 per cent) and science graduates (58 per cent).

 

The report says that key states like Maharashtra, Karnataka and Delhi are emerging as major hubs for employable talent, while cities such as Pune, Bengaluru and Mumbai are leading the way in providing a skilled workforce.

 

Gender analysis shows that the employability rate for men is expected to rise to 53.5 per cent in 2025 from 51.8 per cent in 2024. Meanwhile, for women the employability rate is projected to decline to 47.5 per cent from 50.9 per cent during the same time period.  

 

The report analysed the employability of Indian graduates based on the results of the Wheebox Global Employability Test taken by 650,000 candidates. It also found that nearly 93 per cent of the students expressed strong interest in internships.

 

Nirmal Singh, chief convenor of the India Skills Report, said that the decade ahead should focus on quality skill training to enable better international mobility, particularly through long-term, certified skill programs with embedded language training.

 

Besides, another report, ‘Decoding Jobs - 2025’ released by the industry body CII on Tuesday showed that the hiring intent for the firms for financial year 2026 stood at 9.8 per cent, with the global capability centres, heavy engineering firms and banking & financial industries having the highest intent (12 per cent), followed by core industries (11.5 per cent) and FMCG industries (10 per cent).