Great Lakes Institute study finds nearly a quarter of India’s workforce highly exposed to AI

Key facts

• A report by the Centre for Finance and Economic Research, Great Lakes Institute of Management, based on Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data, finds nearly a quarter of India’s labour force is engaged in work highly exposed to AI.
• About 7.6% of the workforce is expected to see increased productivity from AI, while 11.4% may face substitution risk.
• Agriculture and skilled trades, together accounting for 54.4% of India’s workforce, face relatively low substitution risk from AI or conventional automation.
• The report was authored by Vidya Mahambare, Vivek Jadhav, and Vishnu Venugopalan, and was unveiled by Chief Economic Advisor V Anantha Nageswaran.
• The share of workers in occupations with higher substitution risk is 39.4% in the 15–24 age group, which has a high-routine to complementary job ratio of 7.6 to 1 versus roughly 4 to 1 for older cohorts.
• Maharashtra, Haryana, Kerala and Tamil Nadu have the highest shares of workers in AI-complementary occupations.
• Employment in high-routine occupations susceptible to conventional automation has risen by 4.8 percentage points since 2012, per the CEA’s foreword.