India’s urban labour market continues to show a persistent gender imbalance, even as overall employment trends remain relatively stable. While unemployment rates are often used as the primary indicator of job stress, they do not fully capture who is able to access work in the first place.

India’s latest employment data reveal a divide larger than the headline unemployment rate. In April–June 2026, 8.7% of urban women aged 15 years and above who were in the labour force were unemployed, compared with 6.1% of urban men. But the sharper gap lies in employment itself: only 22.8% of urban women were working, compared with 70.7% of urban men.

The figures come as India’s overall unemployment rate rose to 5.4%, from 5.0% in January–March, according to the latest Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) Quarterly Bulletin released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. Rural unemployment rose from 4.3% to 4.8%, while urban unemployment remained almost unchanged at 6.7%.

For urban women, unemployment actually fell from 9.1% to 8.7% over the quarter. Yet it remains considerably higher than the rate for men.

That makes the story less about a sudden rise in female unemployment and more about a persistent question: why are so few urban women participating in paid work?

The Bigger Divide is Participation

The unemployment rate counts people who are working or actively seeking and available for work. Those outside the labour force are not counted as unemployed.

That distinction is crucial. The urban Worker Population Ratio (WPR) stood at 46.8% overall in April–June. But the gender gap was stark: 70.7% for men and just 22.8% for women.

The nearly 48-percentage-point difference means that looking only at the 8.7% female unemployment rate captures only part of the employment problem. India can therefore have a relatively stable urban unemployment rate while still having a large pool of women who are not participating in the labour market.

Urban Jobs are Changing, But the Gender Gap Remains

The urban labour market itself is not showing signs of a broad collapse. Urban unemployment edged up only marginally from 6.6% to 6.7% during the quarter. At the same time, the share of urban workers in regular wage or salaried employment increased from 48.9% to 49.3%.

Urban employment is also dominated by services. The tertiary sector accounted for 62% of urban employment in April–June, compared with 61.7% a year earlier.

Yet these shifts have not translated into comparable employment outcomes for women.

Rural Unemployment Rose Faster

The national increase in unemployment was partly driven by rural India. Rural unemployment rose by 0.5 percentage points, compared with a 0.1-point increase in urban areas. At the same time, rural employment continued to shift away from agriculture: agriculture’s share fell from 55.8% to 52.9%, while the secondary sector rose from 22.6% to 24.4%.

The figures point to an economy undergoing changes in where and how people work, even as access to employment remains uneven.

Women’s Participation Also Fell

The gender gap extends beyond cities. Overall female labour-force participation declined from 34.7% in January–March to 33.2% in April–June. The overall LFPR for people aged 15 and above also fell, from 55.5% to 54.6%.

The latest figures should not be interpreted as proof that women simply lost jobs. LFPR measures participation in the labour force, while WPR measures actual employment.

But together, the indicators highlight a persistent challenge: India’s employment story cannot be understood through unemployment alone.

The Question of Gender Gap

The PLFS does not establish why urban women participate in the labour market at much lower rates than men. Factors such as childcare, household responsibilities, transport, workplace conditions, safety and access to suitable jobs require separate evidence and reporting.

What the data do establish is the scale of the divide. Urban female unemployment is 8.7%, compared with 6.1% for men. But the much larger gap is in actual employment: 22.8% of urban women were working, against 70.7% of urban men.

As India’s urban economy becomes increasingly service-led and regular salaried employment expands, the central employment question is no longer only how many jobs are being created. It is also who is able to enter the workforce and stay in it.

Second Act is Education Publica’s column on professionals who reinvent themselves after retirement or at major turning points in life. In the previous issue, former Bell Labs researcher Sudhir M. Ambedkar recounted his journey from IIT Bombay and the University of California, Berkeley to nearly three decades of research and innovation at Bell Labs. In this concluding part, he reflects on how retirement opened the door to an equally rewarding second career—as a mathematics teacher, mentor and lifelong learner.

In the previous part of my story, I described how retirement led me to pursue certification as a high school mathematics teacher after my career at Bell Labs. Standing in a classroom for the first time as a teacher marked the beginning of an entirely new chapter in my life.

After completing my certification, I taught mathematics full-time for about seven years. Teaching mathematics in the United States was a new experience for me, and it took some time to adjust to a different way of teaching. While teaching, I learned a few things about some fundamental mathematics concepts that I had never thought about before.

I used a hybrid approach, combining the Indian method and the American method of teaching mathematics. During my tenure as a teacher, I made several observations about the education system where I was teaching, although many of them were generally applicable to the education system in New Jersey as well. I documented those observations in a white paper and sent them to a few education professors at major universities. Some agreed with my observations but said I could not publish the paper in an academic journal because I was not an education researcher.

One observation was the amount of repetition in the curriculum across Algebra I, Algebra II and Pre-Calculus. I felt it would be better to build a stronger foundation in the earlier stages rather than repeat many of the same topics in subsequent courses.

I also noticed that calculators were introduced in very early grades. As a result, many students became overly dependent on them and often lacked the ability to perform mental mathematics. I believe it is important to build a strong understanding of basic mathematical operations and concepts—including addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions and solving equations—before relying heavily on technology.

The mathematics textbooks used in American schools are excellent. They contain colourful illustrations, graphics and worked examples that make concepts easier to understand. At the same time, students often expected teachers to explain every step in detail, rather than working through some of the reasoning independently.

Another aspect that interested me was the grading system. Homework and classwork accounted for a significant portion of students’ grades, while tests and quizzes carried comparatively less weight. In my opinion, this did not always accurately reflect a student’s mathematical skills and knowledge.

The students hardly ever received failing grades, and almost everyone progressed to the next level. On one occasion, I was under pressure to pass a student so that the school could maintain a 100 per cent graduation rate—a highly valued performance indicator.

These observations are not intended as criticism of the education system, but simply to illustrate how it differed from the one I had experienced in India. Bright students always rise to the top in this system as well.

I thoroughly enjoyed teaching, and it was gratifying to see students succeed and gain admission to excellent universities. Unlike research, where results often take years to become visible, I could see the impact of my work immediately.

After about seven years of teaching, I underwent knee surgery. As a result, I gave up classroom teaching and began focusing more seriously on preparing students for the SAT and ACT, the standardised tests widely used for college admissions in the United States.

I worked with two learning centres that referred students to me for SAT and ACT coaching. Over the years, both examinations changed considerably in their format and content, so I had to keep up with those changes and adjust my teaching accordingly.

Initially, I taught students in person. During the COVID-19 pandemic, all instruction shifted to Zoom. Even after the pandemic, I continued teaching online because, since most of my classes were one-to-one, I found Zoom to be both efficient and physically less demanding.

As a result of teaching these examinations, I developed several practical strategies that enabled students to complete the tests accurately within the allotted time. Some students later told me they found these strategies useful not only in the SAT and ACT but also in their regular mathematics and English classes.

I eventually published these strategies as a series of guidebooks on Amazon. The feedback from students and parents has been consistently encouraging.

In terms of years, my teaching career has now lasted about 75 per cent as long as my engineering career. In both professions, I could see the results of my work, but teaching has been more gratifying because I had direct contact with the people who benefited from it.

I expect to continue this second career for as long as possible.

Sudhir M. Ambedkar is a mechanical engineer trained at IIT Bombay and the University of California, Berkeley. He spent nearly three decades at Bell Labs working in telecommunications research and development. After retirement, he became a certified mathematics teacher and now tutors students preparing for the SAT and ACT while authoring test-preparation guides.

India’s young generation is navigating a changing job market, skills gap, career pressures and global ambitions. What can India do to build a more secure and purposeful future for its youth?

India’s youth are shaping the destiny of the modern nation state, and the country’s demographic dividend is often cited as its greatest economic advantage. Yet in the post-pandemic era, that advantage sits uneasily alongside a labour market being reshaped by technology, and alongside growing anxieties about work-life balance. Degrees and formal qualifications matter less than they once did; skills now decide who gets hired. The conventional career ladder is giving way to entrepreneurship, and local ideas are finding global audiences through a digitally connected world.

India’s Youth Face a Changing Job Market

Even in the age of the internet, young people in India’s remote villages need more than connectivity to compete for jobs. Better English communication, soft skills training and technical know-how could do much to empower farmers and young people in rural areas. The Union government’s Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana, aimed at upskilling rural youth, is a step in this direction, but the scheme’s reach and impact deserve closer scrutiny than they currently receive.

Reducing unemployment cannot be the government’s job alone. It calls for a collective effort: a social reform movement that goes beyond electoral politics and pushes for constructive dialogue on the concerns of young people. Independent media has a role here too, in pursuing solutions-driven journalism, without fear or favour, that surfaces localised ideas for financial security and wellbeing.

Dignity of Work, Voice in Parliament

A social renaissance built on universal access to education and life-skills training, paired with a national minimum wage across sectors, would restore a basic sense of dignity to every working citizen. A national mission on youth concerns, one that cuts across party lines, is overdue. Greater youth representation in Parliament could combine the experience of older leaders with the energy of a younger population, in service of the Gandhian ideal of Sarvodaya, the upliftment of all through equal access to education, services and mentorship.

Life After the Civil Services Exam

Many young Indians aspire to the civil services, and a whole industry of coaching academies has grown around that aspiration. But only a small fraction of aspirants clear every stage of the examination and enter the service. For the rest, failure need not be an ending. Careers in media, academia and research are open to those willing to look beyond government employment. Aspirants would do well not to pour years into preparation alone; short courses and internships alongside exam preparation build a resume rich in the domains they actually care about, whatever path they eventually take.

Beyond the Rat Race

The pursuit of social prestige, at the expense of everything else, breeds burnout and a routine that feels mechanical rather than meaningful. A professional life worth having offers more than financial security; it offers peace of mind and a sense of contentment. That kind of self-reliance and purpose is possible, but it requires young people to define success on their own terms rather than borrow someone else’s definition of it.

The same is true of attention. Shrinking attention spans, a by-product of life on the smartphone, are a legitimate cause for concern in a hyper-connected era. A weekly or monthly digital holiday, however modest, can restore clarity of thought and make room for the kind of offline interaction that a screen cannot replace.

An Aspirational, Global Generation

India’s youth remain aspirational, drawn to opportunities in Europe, the Gulf and North America, and increasingly to frontiers beyond Earth. Geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, the war in Ukraine and a volatile global economy have not dimmed that ambition. Policymakers could do more to meet it at home, by building India into a genuine hub for higher education, with international students, faculty and university campuses. That transformation has already begun in pockets. What is missing is a coherent, pan-Indian policy to carry it forward, and with it, India’s aspiration to become a genuine centre of global learning.