Kerala has reaffirmed its strong position in India’s employability landscape by emerging fourth among the top-performing States in the India Skills Report 2026. The State recorded an employability rate of 72.16%, trailing only Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka.
The State also figures among the top-10 preferred States for women professionals, with the report underlining Kerala’s gender-inclusive labour ecosystem
The report has been published by global education and talent solutions organisation ETS in association with various agencies including All India Council for Technical Education, Confederation of Indian Industry and the Association of Indian Universities.
Job readiness
Nationally, overall employability has risen to 56.35%, up from 54.81% last year, with more than half of India’s graduates scoring above 60% in the Global Employability Test (GET) conducted to compile the report. Kerala figures prominently in both State and city-level rankings, reflecting a consistent rise in job readiness and sector-specific skill alignment.
Among the top performing cities, Kochi ranks fourth, ahead of major metros like Delhi and Hyderabad, with an average employability score of 76.56%. The report identifies Tier-2 cities such as Kochi and Lucknow to be emerging as strong talent hubs, narrowing the urban-rural skill gap.
Women’s employability
Women’s employability has seen a remarkable national rise to 54%, surpassing men (51.5%) for the first time. Kerala, along with Uttar Pradesh and Telangana, leads this shift by reporting strong female participation in banking, financial services and insurance sector (BFSI), healthcare and education sectors, where flexible and remote work models are expanding rapidly. .
Additional Skill Acquisition Programme (ASAP) Kerala has been spotlighted in the national report for its role in linking academic learning with market-ready skills. The agency’s intensive training modules, followed by internships, have been credited with improving youth employability. Courses in healthcare, logistics and fintech such as dental assistance, inventory management and AI/IoT-enabled fintech processes, are cited as examples of vocational-academic integration.
The report notes that such initiatives not only enhance employability but also foster local entrepreneurship. By training skilled individuals to join startups and run ventures, ASAP Kerala connects skill development with enterprise creation, the report observes. This linkage, it adds, directly to Kerala’s local job creation and innovation ecosystem.
The report also highlights how Tier-2 cities like Kochi are now gaining traction as delivery hubs for Global Capability Centres (GCCs), which employ over 2 million professionals and contribute $46 billion annually in exports.
Published – November 12, 2025 04:40 pm IST
