This is how the Indian workforce is taking the lead on the global stage

Some countries export oil. Some export technology. And some export skilled labour. India – a country not particularly rich in raw materials and still lagging behind the Asian and European leaders in manufacturing – is specialising in supplying human capital to countries following a demographic trajectory opposite to its own. According to forecasts by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the phenomenon of baby boomers retiring and being only partially replaced by subsequent cohorts is creating the conditions for a gap to emerge in high-income countries, a gap that can only be partially filled through automation and the adoption of artificial intelligence systems.

The gap between supply and demand could reach 50 million jobs by 2030, before tripling over the following decade, affecting not only the so-called ‘jobs nobody wants to do any more’, but also – for almost a third – those carried out by so-called white-collar workers. Translated for India: in rich countries, especially those that have not succumbed to the economic decline brought about by demographic ageing, there is a need not only for nurses from Kerala, but also for engineers from Telangana. It is no coincidence that India has confirmed its status as the world’s leading net exporter of talent, with around 357,000 qualified professionals leaving the country compared with 132,000 arriving. This is a phenomenon that not even the decline in net migration to Trump’s United States – with the return to India of numerous professionals in the fields of science and technology – has managed to curb.

Not content with that, the New Delhi government has long been seeking to forge agreements at an international level to ‘match’ the demographic imbalances of developed countries with its own, even at the cost of encouraging that brain drain which has brought talent fleeing India to the top of some of the world’s leading banks and technology companies. In an attempt to broaden the pool of candidates eligible to work abroad to include those in less senior roles, last July the Indian Ministry of External Affairs organised the first Human Resource Mobility Forum and signed Migration and Mobility Partnership Agreements with 26 countries. It is no coincidence that the recent free trade agreement reached between India and the European Union also includes a regulatory framework to govern not only the movement of goods but also that of people.

A phenomenon which, despite the large diaspora in North America, in the Gulf States and the United Kingdom, has not yet taken off in India to the same extent as elsewhere: here, emigrants account for just 1.3 per cent of the population, compared with 5.1 per cent in the Philippines and 4.3 per cent in Bangladesh. According to estimates by the Global Access to Talent from India Foundation, a think tank, by 2030 India could more than double its export of human capital from 700,000 to 1.5 million people. If successful, this would also have domestic repercussions: Indians living abroad send home remittances totalling $125 billion, roughly 3 per cent of GDP, and it is estimated that in low-income countries, a 10 per cent increase in the emigrant population results in a 2.1 per cent decrease in the number of people living on less than one dollar a day.

The issue of the mismatch between talent and opportunities is not only central to industrialised countries, but also to New Delhi, whose economic growth, whilst robust, is not sufficient to create quality jobs for one of the youngest populations on the planet. Although India’s unemployment rate fell to 5 per cent in August – its lowest level in six months – the figure masks a reality that is less encouraging than it appears. This is partly because, to be counted as employed, a person need only have worked for one hour in the week preceding the survey, and partly because that 5 per cent figure reflects an increase in employment in rural areas and a decline in urban centres – a sign of a deterioration in the quality of work.