Corporate silence on youth protests: governance, accountability, and Gen Z's economic demands

India's demographic dividend — the economic growth potential arising from a large, young, working-age population — has long been treated as a structural advantage. With a median age well below that of ageing economies, India theoretically possesses a large share of producers relative to dependents. However, demography is not destiny. The dividend materialises only when young people transition from education into productive, formal, and adequately compensated employment. This transition requires simultaneous progress on skill development, job creation, and institutional quality — including low corruption, meritocratic hiring, and transparent governance.

Gen Z — individuals born between 1997 and 2012 — constitutes approximately 29.94 crore working-age individuals in India. Their entry into the labour market coincides with structural disruption: post-pandemic recovery, rapid automation, and AI adoption are reshaping available jobs even as GDP grows. The Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) 2023-24 documents a severe employment crisis: the overall Gen Z unemployment rate stands at 11.9%, rising to 17.1% in urban areas and 22.6% for urban young women. Most strikingly, graduate-level Gen Z males face 29% unemployment and females 36.9%, inverting the traditional education-employment relationship and signalling a structural mismatch between the education system and labour market demand.

The institutional architecture meant to address this includes the Labour Codes (2019–2020), consolidating 29 central labour laws into four codes; the Code on Social Security, 2020, which extended statutory social protection to gig and platform workers; the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020; and the Skill India Mission. Despite this architecture, only 20.1% of Gen Z workers have social security coverage and 14.1% have formal job contracts, meaning the vast majority enter the workforce in informal, insecure arrangements.