Nisha Singh 
From Delulu to Solulu: Why India's employment crisis is a trust problem, not a skills problem.
A professional in Delhi with a postgraduate degree and years of senior experience told me she has stopped counting. After hundreds of applications, the number simply stopped meaning anything. Naukri, LinkedIn, other portals, referrals from friends, former colleagues and relatives all of it disappeared into silence. No interview. No “we regret to inform you.” Just nothing.
She is not an outlier. She is the median.
A single entry-level posting on Naukri can still attract close to 2,000 applications in three days. The company shortlists fifty and hires one. The rest hear nothing.
This is not about weak resumes or missing skills. We should stop saying it is.
The numbers that hide the problem
Official data still shows unemployment at a comfortable ~3.1–3.2% annually, or 5.5% on the monthly Current Weekly Status measure in June 2026 (it fell to 5.1% in July). The picture changes once you look closer. Youth unemployment (15–29) was 16.2% in June and 15.6% in July, still more than three times the overall rate. Urban and young-women rates remain significantly higher. One in three employed women works unpaid inside the family business not by choice, but because there is nothing else.
Labour force participation is falling. People are not finding jobs; they are leaving the market. Once they stop looking, the statistic stops calling them unemployed. Graduate unemployment sits at 13%, higher than for those who only finished secondary school. We produced the world's largest pool of graduates and gave too many of them nothing to do with it.
Why the phone never rings
Three things are happening at the same time and almost no one in authority will name all three together.
First, the sector that once took in graduates by the lakh has sharply cut entry-level hiring. Fresher recruitment in IT services peaked near 6 lakh roles in FY22. By FY25, it was down to roughly 1.2 lakh. The top five IT firms together reduced headcount by nearly 7,000 in FY26. TCS alone cut more than 23,000. Tech Mahindra’s workforce has fallen for three straight quarters; its IT headcount dropped below 75,000 in the April–June 2026 quarter even while the company said it had no large-scale layoff plan.
Second, many of the jobs people apply for may not be real. Up to 30% of listings globally may be ghost jobs, posted to build a pipeline or show boards hiring is happening. In India, nearly 90% of resumes never reach a human; automated systems reject them on formatting alone. People are not being rejected. They are being erased before anyone looks.
Third, AI is already changing the numbers, mostly without public announcement. Companies speak of restructuring, bench rationalisation, performance exits and skill realignment. Estimates put Indian IT job losses this year between 25,000 and 35,000. Worldwide, more than 1.63 lakh technology roles have already gone this year, as per IANS till 8 Aug 2026. Global Capability Centres are still hiring, but they want people with two or three years of AI, cloud or data experience. They are not hiring freshers and often not mid-career professionals either.
The result is a closed circle: fewer real jobs, more false openings and filters that never allow a human conversation.
The old system with new language
Indian companies never completely left the old Lala style of running a business. They only gave it modern labels: lean team, performance culture, meritocracy. The underlying deal stays the same: hire when it suits, let go when it does not, give little security and still expect full loyalty.
Recent cases show how this works. In July 2026, Bhavana, who worked at Tech Mahindra in Hyderabad, protested outside the Dundigal campus after she was terminated following leave she took to look after her sick daughter. She described a sudden exit and a difficult work environment.
This is not new. Similar patterns have surfaced before a 2017 case where Anand Mahindra had to publicly apologise after an HR call asking an employee to resign went viral and a 2023 petition from Cognizant and Tech Mahindra staff in Pune alleging illegal terminations. What is changed is the scale, not the behaviour.
These are not one-off performance problems. They show a pattern of soft exits, abrupt calls, immediate separations and careful avoidance of the word layoff.
A quieter shift runs underneath: AI is increasingly a reason to cut, not a tool to support people. Twenty years of service now often ends with under six months of savings.
The four Labour Codes were meant to change this. On paper, they improve things: gratuity after one year for fixed-term staff, social security for gig workers, easier standing orders for smaller firms. But West Bengal and Kerala have still not notified the codes. Delhi has not finished its rules. Several major industrial states remain in draft more than eight months after the central codes came into force. A law that stays only on paper is not a law.
Boards cannot keep looking away.
It is easy to blame government. Boards deserve the same scrutiny.
The same board that clears a public “we are hiring” message often freezes the actual positions in the same quarter. The same board that approves “restructuring” or “bench rationalisation” knows what those words mean. This is not an oversight failure; it is a chosen way of speaking that avoids responsibility.
What needs to change is straightforward. Boards should look every quarter at real hiring-to-offer numbers and real replacement rates after people leave, not just statements of intent. Independent directors should ask how many vacancies on the company website stayed open for ninety days without anyone being hired. Variable pay for senior leaders should be tied, in a clear and public way, to actual net job creation. And when a restructuring is a layoff, it should be called a layoff, with proper notice and severance.
Boards are supposed to turn plans into accountability. Too many are doing the opposite.
What government needs to do
Publish unemployment figures every month by sector, without using definitional gaps to soften the picture. Make ghost job postings an offence for platforms operating in India. Fix a firm deadline for states to notify the Labour Codes and enforce it. Make social security contributions for gig workers compulsory now. Link Skill India and PMKVY money to actual placements, not just training numbers. Create real paid apprenticeships instead of unpaid internships that pretend to be opportunity.
How people are expected to manage
No one in a ministry has a useful answer to this, so the plain truth has to be said. The quiet from employers is not a judgment on anyone’s ability. It is the noise of a system organised around filters, pipelines and quarterly costs rather than around people.
That knowledge does not pay the rent. But it is the difference between people who slowly give up and people who become angry enough, together, to insist on a labour market that treats them as human.
We owe them that. We are still not giving it.
If you or someone you know is struggling, the Tele-MANAS helpline (14416) offers free, confidential mental health support across India.
(Sources: Periodic Labour Force Survey, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, June & July 2026; Ministry of Labour and Employment, Central Rules under the four Labour Codes, May 2026; quarterly results and industry reporting on TCS, Tech Mahindra, Infosys, Wipro and HCLTech through Q1 FY27; staffing firm and Layoffs. fyi estimates on 2026 IT job losses; contemporary reporting (Siasat Daily, The Hindu) on the Bhavana case, July 2026 and labour petitions, July 2026.)
(Nisha Singh is a policy analyst under MSDE, working at the intersection of skilling, employability, and workforce development. Views expressed are her own).
