At 28, Dishant Nisar had considered most of the options commonly presented to a young graduate. The Malad resident, whose father, Amrutlal Nisar, runs a Gujarati publishing house, completed a degree in mass media at Nagindas Khandwala College in 2019. He considered an MBA, professional courses and a business of his own.
A business appeared reasonably secure if he stayed within the commercial world familiar to his family and community, perhaps through a shop or factory. An independent venture would require capital and carry greater risk. Nisar chose competitive examinations for government jobs instead.
“A degree did not guarantee that I would find a job with a decent salary,” he says. “With so many layoffs in the private sector, a government career seemed more dependable.”
Security was only part of its appeal. Nisar was also drawn to the responsibility that comes with administrative service and the opportunity to influence how government decisions are carried out. In June 2026, Nisar cleared the Civil Services Main Examination conducted by the Union Public Service Commission. and cleared the interview to join the Indian Administrative Service.
His choice runs against the familiar account of Gen Z as entrepreneurial, digitally fluent and ready to change jobs whenever a better opportunity appears. Yet an August 2026 India Today-CVoter survey found that he’s part of a growing tribe – 49 per cent of its Gen Z respondents preferred government jobs. The sarkari naukri, long associated with a parental desire for caution and stability, appears to have acquired fresh appeal among city youth. For them, ambition now means finding a job that will still be around after 10 years.
Security has a waiting list
Hemanshi Agarwal, who has worked in recruitment for more than eight years, says young candidates now ask questions that go well beyond the first salary. “They want to know whether their skills will remain useful and whether the job they accept today will still exist five or 10 years from now,” she says.
She has met young people who fear that automation could reduce the demand for the work they will have trained to do. “They no longer assume that a private-sector career will remain secure if they work hard and keep learning,” Agarwal says. “Some now see government or public-sector employment as the safer long-term option.”
They have reason to be wary. India’s five largest IT-services companies shed a net 6,981 employees in 2025-26, after adding 12,718 the previous year; TCS alone reduced its workforce by 23,460. Active technology vacancies fell to 110,000 in April 2026, down eight per cent in a month, while openings in IT services were seven per cent lower than both March and the previous April. The wider industry still added 1.4 lakh jobs, largely through global capability centres, but recruitment increasingly favours candidates with specialist AI, cloud, data and cybersecurity skills. For a general graduate, the entry gate is narrowing. Government examinations remain a formidable gamble, too, they know, but the syllabus, cut-offs, pay scales and benefits are at least visible from the outset.
Trading hope for reality
Saurav Gurudas Bhomkar, now 27, decided to take that risk in 2021. While he completed a Bachelor of Management Studies degree at Sathaye College in Vile Parle, campus placement secured him a private-bank job that paid about Rs 15,000 a month. He lived with his mother and younger brother in a rented one-bedroom flat in Mira Road.
Within six months, sales targets, heavy pressure and the fear of dismissal had begun to outweigh the comfort of a monthly salary. Bhomkar had also seen artificial-intelligence tools take on some tasks that employees had previously performed. He resigned, even before he had another offer before him, and devoted himself to recruitment examinations for a job at the Reserve Bank of India.
“I was the family’s primary breadwinner, and my mother and younger brother depended on my salary,” he says. “My mother still told me to stay home and study while she managed the household expenses. Her faith in me gave me the courage to take that chance.”
Bhomkar initially set his sights on becoming a Grade B officer at the Reserve Bank of India. He sat several competitive examinations and sometimes missed the qualifying cut-off by less than one mark. Rather than confine himself to the RBI, he began applying for posts at public-sector banks and insurance companies.
After two years of preparation, he cleared all three stages of the Life Insurance Corporation of India’s selection process and joined as a Development Officer in 2023. The job enabled him to buy a home and a vehicle, while also helping to finance his younger brother’s education.
“I may have needed another 20 or 25 years to make the same financial progress in the private sector,” he estimates.
If Bhomkar left a job after deciding its risks were too high. Shubhra Roy, now 27, abandoned a profession before she had even entered it, convinced that AI could reduce demand for the research work she was training to do.
Degrees of uncertainty
Roy, who lives in Andheri, came to Mumbai in 2020 to pursue a master’s degree at the Mumbai School of Economics and Public Policy, part of the University of Mumbai. The economics graduate from Delhi’s Laxmibai College hoped to work at a think tank, with a focus on macroeconomics and public policy.
Halfway through the course, she began to question both the curriculum and the career ahead. The programme concentrated on microeconomics and statistics, while her interests lay in macroeconomics and public policy. She also feared that artificial intelligence would reduce the demand for junior researchers.
“I came to Mumbai because I wanted a career in policy research,” she says. “During the course, I began to wonder how many of those jobs would remain once AI could do a substantial part of the research.”
This is hardly paranoia, although the more immediate threat is fewer entry-level opportunities rather than the disappearance of research itself. In February 2026, an Observer Research Foundation America essay, The Future of Think Tanks in the Age of AI, asked what becomes of policy institutes when AI agents can search, synthesise and draft at speeds no researcher can match. It argued that human work would move towards verification, judgement and the detection of bias.
The International Labour Organization reached a similarly nuanced conclusion in 2025 – that one in four workers worldwide was employed in an occupation with some exposure to generative AI, although most jobs were more likely to be transformed than eliminated. For a young researcher, that offers limited comfort. If AI assumes the basic research tasks usually assigned to junior employees, think tanks may recruit fewer of them. The profession could retain its senior experts while losing the first rung of the career ladder.
Roy left her master’s course in 2021 and began preparation for the Union Public Service Commission examination. She failed her first attempt, cleared the preliminary stage on her second but not the mains, and faced health problems during her third. She later expanded her options to include examinations conducted by the Reserve Bank of India, the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development, banks and the railways.
Four years and several examination cycles forced her to consider how long one ambition should be allowed to consume one. “You have to know when to reconsider your plan,” she says. “Your twenties form the foundation of your career, and you cannot keep sacrificing those years indefinitely.”
Roy eventually secured a place in the Indian Railway Traffic Service.
Agarwal sees such a decision as practical rather than defeatist. “A career change requires time, preparation and sacrifice,” she says. “The earlier you understand what you want, the better placed you are to act.”
Shraddha Ravi Kadre, too, would rather be safe than sorry. She had already seen what the loss of a salary could do to a family, and knew exactly what she wanted stable employment to buy.
Security in square feet
Kadre, 26, is the youngest of three sisters in a middle-class Virar West family that had never owned a home. Her father lost his job during a union strike while she was in college, turning financial security from a distant concern into an immediate family need.
Kadre began paid work while she pursued a Bachelor of Commerce degree at Sathaye College. She attended classes in the morning and spent her afternoons handling customer queries and selling mock tests and examination products at Prime Softech Solutions in Vasai. What began as a part-time post eventually occupied six or seven hours a day.
“I saw the pressure my colleagues faced in sales and marketing,” she says. “I knew I did not want to spend my career chasing targets like that.”
Her mother encouraged her to consider bank and public-sector posts. Kadre had been curious about bank work since childhood, when she often accompanied her father to a branch and watched its employees.
“My father’s job loss made financial security much more important to me,” she says. “Once I decided what I wanted, I concentrated completely on getting there.”
After graduation in 2021, Kadre spent two years preparing for recruitment examinations while she retained her job and completed a Master of Commerce degree by correspondence through the University of Mumbai. She cleared the Life Insurance Corporation of India recruitment examination on her first attempt and became a Development Officer in 2023.
“The housing, medical and travel allowances mattered to me, as did access to a home loan at a lower interest rate,” she says. “My greatest achievement, however, was buying my own home at 26. The job gave me the financial independence I had wanted.”
A headstart on certainty
Like Kadre, Rimsha Kudalkar made her choice before she entered the labour market. In 2023, aged 18, she completed Class XII in commerce at Navneet College in Mumbai Central with 88 per cent, after a Class X score of 94 per cent. She lived with her parents in a small house in Kurla and knew that she did not want the hours she saw private-sector employees keep.
One woman in her neighbourhood worked at weekends and resumed office tasks after she returned home at night. “Her job had taken over her life,” Rimsha says. “I wanted secure work, but I also wanted some time for myself.”
Atif Kudalkar, who runs a career-counselling centre in Bhendi Bazaar, recommended the Staff Selection Commission examinations for Grade C and D stenographers. Since applicants could qualify after Class XII, Rimsha did not have to wait until she completed a university degree.
She used YouTube and Atif’s study centre to prepare for English language and comprehension, general intelligence and reasoning, general awareness and typing. She cleared the examination on her first attempt.
At 21, Rimsha works as a Grade II Stenographer at the Vikhroli office of the Directorate General of Quality Assurance, an inter-service body under the Department of Defence Production in the Ministry of Defence. Her father, an employee of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, and her mother, a homemaker, supported the decision.
Rimsha now plans to complete a Bachelor of Commerce degree through the University of Mumbai. “Getting the job early gave me security,” she says. “It did not mean I had to give up my education.”
Salary without security
For a 26-year-old Vile Parle resident who did not want to be named, government employment became attractive only after he had worked in a corporate office. He had hoped for a career in software development and secured a post through campus placement. But the hours were erratic, the workload continued to increase and dismissal seemed possible at any time. “However much work I took on, I never felt secure,” he says. “I did not want to spend my career afraid that I could suddenly lose my job.”
After several sessions with a career counsellor, he began preparation for competitive examinations in 2023. He sat for the Staff Selection Commission Combined Graduate Level Tier I examination in September 2024, cleared the selection process and joined the Union Ministry of Finance in Delhi as a junior translator.
“I had always imagined that I would work in software,” he says. “It was only after I experienced corporate life that I understood how much stability mattered to me.”
The family-funded safety net
Ashish Bhati, chief executive and director of Allegiance Educare, cautions against treating government service as an answer to every fear about employment. Students in Classes X or XII, he says, know too little about professional life to select a career chiefly because it appears safe. People who have already faced layoffs, unstable employment or punishing hours can make a more informed assessment.
“A school student should not choose government service simply because it sounds secure,” Bhati says. “For someone who has already experienced the uncertainty of corporate employment, the same decision may be perfectly reasonable.”
Government and public-sector employment cannot be the answer for everyone, and for every anxiety. The work has its own downside too – jobs are limited, exams may frustrate, promotions may take years… Success also relies on family support that conventional accounts of merit tend to overlook.
Bhomkar could go without his salary because his mother assumed responsibility for the household. Roy could devote four years to repeated attempts because her family supported her. But these are challenges many young job-seekers and their families are willing to work to counter together.
Every generation has entered employment with its own anxieties, from recessions and industrial decline to outsourcing and contract work. But today’s entrants face an unusually fast collision of forces.
The World Economic Forum estimates that economic and technological forces will create 170 million jobs while simultaneously displacing 92 million others worldwide by 2030. Clerical and secretarial posts are among those expected to decline fastest, a reminder that even the government role Rimsha has secured may evolve. Public employment offers no immunity from automation, but it may mean greater protection for the employee while the work evolves.
That prospect is enough for families to make this formidable wager. The odds remain punishing, but the alternatives no longer look reliably safer. For young workers who have seen jobs disappear despite degrees and hard work, even a small chance of permanence can justify years in the queue.