India Will Fail to Plug Jobs Gap Even With 7% Growth, Citi Says

India will struggle to create enough jobs for its growing workforce over the next decade even if the economy grows at a rapid pace of 7%, Citigroup Inc. said, suggesting the world’s most-populous nation will need more concerted steps to boost employment and skills.

Citi estimates India will need to create about 12 million jobs a year over the next decade to absorb the number of new entrants to the labor market. Based on a growth rate of 7%, India can only generate 8-9 million jobs a year, the bank’s economists Samiran Chakraborty and Baqar Zaidi wrote in a report this week.