Why Is Nobody Telling College Students Not to Depend on a Formal-Sector Job Alone?
India produces more than a crore higher-education graduates every year. But are we preparing them for the labour market they are actually entering?
There is a conversation we rarely have with college students in India.
What happens if you don't get a formal-sector job?
From the first day of college, students are encouraged to think about placements, packages, government exams and corporate careers. The message is subtle but consistent: get a degree, become employable, secure a "good job." But India's labour market does not have enough formal, salaried employment to make that the default destination for every graduate.
The numbers should change the conversation
In 2023-24, 1.10 crore students passed out of India's higher-education system, continuing a steady climb from 1.07 crore in 2021-22 (AISHE 2023-24, Department of Higher Education). Yet the latest PLFS shows only 23.6% of India's workers were in regular wage or salaried employment in 2025, up marginally from 22.4% the year before (PLFS Annual Report 2025, MoSPI). NITI Aayog's own breakdown of PLFS 2023-24 data, covering India's roughly 634 million workers and puts 58.4% in self-employment and 19.8% in casual labour, against just 21.7% in regular wage or salaried work (NITI Aayog, Education and Skilling for Employment).
These figures don't collapse neatly into one number, regular salaried employment, formal employment, and EPFO coverage are three different things, and it would be sloppy to treat them as interchangeable. But taken together, they point in one direction: India's economy is far larger than its formal, salaried job market. Our higher-education system, however, still behaves as if a formal job is the expected outcome for every graduate.
One more reference point, used carefully: EPFO's official dashboard shows 7.74 crore Aadhaar-validated contributing members as of September 2026 (EPFO Dashboard, Government of India). This isn't a count of "formal jobs", it covers only workers in EPF-linked establishments, excludes many government employees and smaller firms below the coverage threshold, counts accounts rather than unique people (someone who changes jobs can appear more than once), and is a live figure that moves daily rather than a fixed annual number. It doesn't map cleanly onto the pass-out or PLFS numbers above. But even read generously as the scale of India's core organised, contribution-based workforce, it's a fraction of the population these graduates are entering the labour market alongside.
We cannot design a national aspiration around one outcome
I've made versions of this argument before, most recently that the old promise of degree → job → stable life is becoming harder to sustain, and that higher education's real purpose is to equip students to solve real problems, whether that happens through employment, entrepreneurship, or something else entirely.
This piece is the next question in that line of thinking: if a formal-sector job can't be the destination for everyone, what should we actually be preparing students for?
Stop equating a job with a career
A job is one form of work. A career is much broader.
A graduate can join a company, start a business, become self-employed, join a family enterprise, work as an independent professional, build a digital business, pursue research, or create employment for others. These aren't consolation prizes for people who failed to land a corporate job, they're legitimate pathways.
But Indian society doesn't quite treat them as equal. Someone at a company gets asked, "Where do you work?" Someone running a small business gets asked, "But what is your job?" That distinction matters, because it shapes what young people prepare themselves for. If students spend four years believing the objective is a formal job, they optimise for being selected rather than for creating value, a dangerous habit in a fast-changing economy.
This should start in year one, not placement season
Colleges should tell students, from orientation onward, that higher education raises three questions, not two: What do I know? What can I do? and the one usually left out How do I create value from what I know and can do?
A student should learn how to be employable. But they should also learn how businesses work, how customers decide, how money moves through an economy, how to spot a problem worth solving, and how to sell an idea or a service. Not because every student should become an entrepreneur but because every student should develop economic agency: the knowledge that their livelihood doesn't have to depend entirely on someone else choosing to employ them.
This is not an argument against formal job
A good formal-sector job is an excellent career choice, learning, income, networks, social security, and opportunities that are hard to build independently. Students should absolutely aspire to one if it suits them.
The message isn't "don't seek a job." It's: don't build your entire career plan around the assumption that you must get one. A student who enters college believing there's only one acceptable outcome, a government job, a multinational job, can spend years preparing for exams and placements while never seriously exploring what else was possible. That's the real tragedy: not failing to get the job, but never looking past it.
Prepare students for work, not just a job
Higher education should produce people who can find work, do work, create work, and eventually create work for others. That takes more than a degree, it takes communication, problem-solving, digital competence, financial literacy, domain expertise, and comfort with uncertainty.
It's the same gap I've pointed to before in arguing India needs to move from degrees to competencies: the disconnect isn't just too many graduates, it's a weak link between degrees, capability, and actual economic need. Part of that starts even earlier, most students and parents are choosing from a handful of known careers, unaware of how much larger the real universe of options is.
Maybe the shortage isn't only of jobs. It's also a shortage of imagination about what a career can be.
The orientation every college should give
"You are here to build knowledge, skills, judgement and confidence. A formal-sector job may be one outcome, it is not the only measure of success. Learn how to become employable, but also learn how to create value independently. Explore employment, entrepreneurship, self-employment, family business, professional practice, research, and new forms of work. Your degree should give you more choices, not fewer."
We've spent decades expanding access to higher education and multiplying the number of graduates. The next challenge is making sure those graduates understand the economy they're actually entering.
Don't tell India's college students to stop looking for jobs. Tell them not to make a job their only definition of a successful career, because the future of work will belong not just to those who get hired, but to those who can create value wherever they stand.
About the Author:
Dr SP Mishra is the Founder of India Career Centre, a Hyderabad-based career guidance, study-abroad consulting and educational research organisation. He writes and speaks on career decision-making, higher education, skills, employability and the future of work in India. Also hosts the India Career Centre Podcast. Connect on LinkedIn.
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