The employability gap as a migration engine

The full distribution for “Do you currently feel that your formal college degree can secure you an immediate, industry-ready job?” (n = 399) is: Only partially sufficient — 45.1% (180); No, it is completely insufficient — 27.8% (111); Yes, it is fully sufficient — 27.1% (108).

The cohort is moderately concentrated on this question. One option leads without dominating, so the second and third answers carry real policy weight. The smallest recorded answer, yes, it is fully sufficient, still represents 108 people — a group large enough to matter in programme design even at 27.1%.

“How do you primarily acquire modern, industry-relevant skills today?” (n = 399) returns: YouTube and free open-source materials — 50.1% (200); Strictly from my formal college classes — 32.8% (131); Paid online certification courses (Udemy, Coursera, etc.) — 15.3% (61); Government training setups (ASAP Kerala, K-DISC) — 1.8% (7).

Placed beside the primary figure, this measure shows a majority position — 50.1% on YouTube and free open-source materials — which is the more reliable of the two anchors here. Read together, the two questions describe cross-cutting analysis as a pattern reported across the cohort rather than an issue confined to a minority of respondents.

“Are you personally interested in or planning to migrate outside of Kerala for studies or a career?” (n = 399) adds: Yes, I am interested / planning to migrate — 67.7% (270); No, I intend to stay and build my career inside Kerala — 32.3% (129).

This third figure is included because it constrains the interpretation of the first two: it shows where respondents locate responsibility or intent, and therefore which interventions the data can and cannot be used to argue for.

These are self-reported answers from a community-recruited cohort of 399 young Keralites surveyed between 21 May and 28 June 2026. They are not probability-sample estimates of Kerala's youth population, and confidence intervals from random sampling do not apply.

Because 74.4% of respondents sit in one age band and 72.7% identify as male, subgroup differences are indicative at best. Cross-tabulated claims require a larger, stratified sample.

Finally, the survey measures single-point self-report, so it can establish association and scale but not direction or cause. Where this brief notes a pattern across two questions, that pattern is descriptive.