The Centre’s flagship online employment exchange project—the National Career Service (NCS)—that was launched in July 2015, has over 4.25 crore job seekers registered with the portal, but only 8.80 lakh vacancies have been posted on the portal in almost three years, as per data available on the portal.
The NCS portal functions under the Ministry of Labour and was launched to replace 978 existing National Employment Exchanges across the country. The launch of the NCS project cost Rs 100 crore to the government, and the portal has witnessed the registration of 14.87 lakh employers since its inception. While over 8.80 lakh vacancies were posted on the portal, not all of them may have resulted in jobs, as the portal only maintains records of the vacancies posted on it but it doesn’t keep any record of placements.
Registration by job seekers and employers, as well as posting of vacancies has been stagnant in 2018 after witnessing a huge jump in 2016 and 2017. From July 2015 to March 2016, the portal attracted 3.6 crore job seekers and 9.6 lakh employers and 45,911 vacancies posted on the portal. In 2017, 22.7 lakh job seekers and 5.6 lakh employers registered with the NCS portal and 5.2 lakh vacancies were posted.
Data available on the NCS portal shows that of the 4.25 crore registered job seekers, about 65% are men. Over 46% of those registered are in the 24-34 age group, a little over 24% are in the 18-24 age group and about 22% are between 35-44 years old.
Tamil Nadu and West Bengal account for the largest number of registrations at a little over 21% each. Around 10% of the job seekers were from Maharashtra and about 9% from Gujarat. States such as Bihar, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal account for the largest number of registrations.