Number of government job seekers crosses 1-cr mark in Tamil Nadu

She is not alone in this pursuit. Even as private industry continues to boom in the state, the craze for government employment reached a new height in Tamil Nadu as the number of people registered with employment exchange offices across the state crossed one crore recently. 

Radhika still hopes that one day, she would get a government job. “I will continue to wait,” she added. 

Like her, several lakh people are still at waiting with some having registered in the exchange several decades ago. 

On date, over one crore people have registered in employment exchanges across the state. It includes 58.2 lakh matriculation students. 

A senior officer from the Tamil Nadu Labour Department said it is likely to increase by about 15 lakh next year. “The gap between the number of job seekers and available employment in the government has increased several fold,” he said. 

According to him, as of March 2018, the number of registrants in the 18 to 35 age group was 47 lakh. “A total of 5,860 people above the age of 57 are still waiting,” the official said. 

Manoharan (42) has lost track of how many years he has been waiting. “Though I have a bleak chance of getting a government job, I can wait another couple of years,” Manoharan said. He claimed that the government recruits people even at the age of 45. “Some government contract jobs do not have age limits,” he said.

However, the Labour Department official pointed out that at this point of time, the state government was recruiting only freshers through state public service exams. 

Statistics put out by the Labour Department further said that about 20 lakh graduates in various disciplines have registered in the employment exchanges. 

Likewise, about 6.5 lakh post-graduate students were still waiting to get government jobs after registering in the employment exchanges. 

Last year, the government job seekers in Tamil Nadu was about 86 lakh and it is likely to be 1.15 crore next year. 

The Labour Department official pointed out that most of the registrants are from rural areas of the state.