A pervasive problem here is that there just aren’t enough jobs for everybody. Or at least, not a job that pays well enough to consider. The educational system is lagging behind too, with not enough seats for the millions of young people who need it.
This is papered over by the fact that we have good economic growth rates. But, this is confusing the stock market for the economy. The rate of inequality is also steadily climbing with the percentage of wealth owned by billionaires only being second to Russia.
A government job
But the competition is fierce. Roughly half a million young people took the annual preliminary test for the Bihar Public Services Commission in February, for a total of 281 jobs. For every batch of 2,000 hopefuls, 1,999 will walk away with nothing.
Sometimes the only option in a lot of places. The pay and benefits are decent compared to private sector work, especially at the lower level.
The thing I tell my students is think of job hunting like a statistics problem. If job hiring was done by drawing your name at random, in order to get a job you would have to apply to as many openings as the average number of applicants applying at the jobs you are applying for.
Back in the 80s, you would apply to 3 jobs to find one because on average 3 people would apply to an opening. With the birth for the internet, the average job gets dozens of applicants. If it is a tech job, hundreds, and if it is a WFH job with good pay and not a scummy employer - thousands?
If these people did think about it as a statistical problem, they would burn everything down. Which is the prediction because large numbers of people without adequate employment opportunities leads to unstable times.
Seriously, aspiration and hope are the only things keeping them from becoming violent. Because we as a country have failed them.