Employment opportunities

India must prepare workers for changing global needs

A new NITI Aayog study highlighted that India accounts for the world’s largest overseas migrant population, at 18.5 million, and is also the highest recipient of remittances. This underlines the need to strengthen skilling and institutional mechanisms to meet global labour demand. The current pipeline is concentrated in lower-skilled work, where construction alone accounts for 71.3 per cent of National Skill Development Corporation International-facilitated overseas placements. Between January 2020 and June 2025, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu together accounted for more than 1.16 million emigration clearances, while Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) remained the largest destinations.

 

There is a large opportunity to diversify this pattern. Across advanced economies, ageing populations and shrinking working-age cohorts are tightening labour markets. At the same time, mismatches in structural skills and the weak alignment of education and training curricula with the requirements of labour markets are creating shortages of appropriately skilled workers. Demand is expanding across infrastructure and construction, logistics and transport, information & communication technology and digital services, green-transition industries, hospitality, health care, and personal and social services. India’s challenge is to connect its labour pool with these shortages rather than rely predominantly on traditional, low-wage migration channels. Poorly organised migration can also erode its economic gains. A 2023 study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research on Indian workers migrating to the UAE found that migration doubled compensation, but intermediary fees reduced take-home pay by about 10 per cent. Migrants also reported a significant fall in subjective well-being. Such costs highlight the risks created by inadequate information and weak safeguards.

 

The policy objective, therefore, should not be merely to send more workers, but to shift from informal, low-wage migration to demand-driven skilled mobility. There is a need for migration dashboards, foreign-language training, internationally recognised certification, and employer partnerships. More states should consider establishing mobility-resource centres as institutional interfaces for last-mile delivery of mobility services. These centres can provide counselling, career guidance, information on destination-country requirements, documentation, and pre-departure support, helping workers make informed choices while reducing their dependence on informal intermediaries. Also a dedicated diaspora representation is important to raise workers’ concerns with host governments, strengthen legal protection, and ensure timely grievance redress.

 

The state should promote circular migration. Workers returning with skills, savings and international experience should receive support to re-enter domestic markets, start enterprises, or find productive employment at home. This would turn migration into a channel for knowledge and capital transfer rather than a one-way movement of labour. However, it must be noted that overseas migration cannot substitute domestic job creation. India needs a dual strategy of building a workforce capable of accessing better global opportunities while expanding productive employment at home. The objective should be to make migration a choice based on opportunity, not necessity, and to position India not merely as a supplier of labour but as a global source of skilled human capital.