‘Demand-driven skill development must to reduce need gap for skilled workers among MSMEs’.

Due to the lockdown and the ongoing pandemic, millions of India’s labor force migrated back to their hometowns and villages. This mass exodus has caused a labor shortage in organizations across India. While India doesn’t have data on the labor force population in the period of Q4 2019 to Q2 2020, the PLFS 2017–2018 estimated that 77.1 per cent of employment in India is non-regular—either self-employed or casual workers. This includes a further 13.7 per cent in regular but unprotected jobs. Thereby, taking into consideration the 2020 UN population estimates to the above proportion, the International Labor Organization (ILO) suggested that the lockdown put between 364 million and 473 million workers at risk of being adversely affected.