Which states produce India's engineering workforce?

The results of the IIT entrance exam JEE-Advanced released on September 11th showed that the IIT Delhi zone had the most number of candidates in the top 500 with 133. Followed closely by IIT Madras zone with 132 candidates and IIT Bombay zone with 126 students.

And in the top 10 list, IIT Madras circle was ahead with five candidates followed by IIT Bombay Zone at three and IIT Delhi and Kharagpur zones each claiming one spot each.  

  

Uttar Pradesh emerged as the top state with 3,864 qualifying candidates while Rajasthan, home to tuition hub Kota, took the second spot with 3,339 candidates. Maharashtra is sending 3,036 candidates to IITs whereas coaching hubs of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana ranked fourth and fifth. 

Tamil Nadu, which boasts of the highest annual enrolment into various engineering courses, does not feature in the top five. In the 2017-18 academic year, about 1.58 lakh students enrolled in UG and PG courses in the engineering and technology domain in the state.

Andhra Pradesh followed it with 1.01 lakh students. Maharashtra comes next with 1 lakh enrolments. 

Half of all the engineering seats in India are located in the five southern states namely Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Kerala. Rest of the seats are fairly well-distributed across the country. 

  

But the all-India capacity utilisation is as low as 49.2%. While the approved engineering seats in 2017-18 was 16.6 lakh, the number of students who enrolled was 8.18 lakh. This indicates the supply of engineering seats exceeds the demand for the same. 

In 2013-14, enrolment was 59% of total capacity. States with the lower number of seats have reported higher enrolment percentages while the states with larger capacity have reported lower percentage of enrolment in engineering, with Karnataka being an exception. 

The enrolment percentage in Tamil Nadu, which had 3.02 lakh engineering seats in 2017-18, was just 53% while Karnataka’s was 65%.

Delhi with about 10,700 seats had an enrolment ratio of 79%. Overall, the number of students who found placement at the end of the academic year was 3.45 lakh or about 42% of the total number of students who enrolled in engineering. This is an increase from 29% of students placed in 2013-14.

Now comes the most crucial factor: the employability. A NASSCOM survey in 2019 had revealed that out of about 15 lakh engineering graduates which India churns out every year, only 2.5 lakh land jobs. The National Employability Report for Engineers 2019 by SHL shows that employability of engineers in IT services companies is just 16.25% and 3.4% for IT products. It goes as high as 39% for non-tech roles like ITeS/BPO associate. 

This report was based on a sample of more than 170,000 engineering students from 750+ engineering colleges across multiple Indian states.

The report indicates that students from Bihar, Jharkhand, Delhi, Haryana and West Bengal have the highest employability in IT services roles.

Odisha, Telangana, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh form the next tier in employability. Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Punjab and Rajasthan fell in the third category. Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra were in the bottom 25 percentile bin. 

States with the highest number of colleges showed the lowest percent employability.