Bihar's Job Puzzle: High Competition for Government Posts, Low Workforce Entry

The sight of young people protesting over recruitment examinations in Bihar has put the spotlight on the state's complex jobs landscape. At the heart of the matter is a paradox: while lakhs of candidates compete for a handful of government posts, a large share of the state's youth are not in the labour force at all.

Take the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) examinations. In the 67th Combined Competitive Examination (CCE), about 4.8 lakh candidates turned up for just 802 posts. The 68th CCE saw 2.6 lakh aspirants for 324 vacancies, and the 69th had roughly 1.9 lakh candidates for 475 posts. Even when vacancies rose — 2,035 posts in the 70th CCE — the number of applicants also surged to 3.3 lakh. The latest 71st CCE drew 3.2 lakh candidates for 1,298 posts.

These numbers reveal that even a substantial increase in openings does little to ease the competition. Government jobs remain a magnet because they offer a clear, stable career path in a state where the broader job market fails to pull in young workers.

Data from the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) for 2025 shows Bihar's youth unemployment rate at 12.1%. More telling, however, is the labour-force participation rate (LFPR) — the share of people either working or actively seeking work. Only 34.3% of Bihar's 15-29 age group was in the labour force in 2025, against 46% nationally — a gap of 11.7 percentage points.

The trend over the years is revealing. Bihar's youth LFPR stood at 24.4% in 2017-18, rose to 27.6% in 2018-19, dipped to 25.7% in 2020-21, and then climbed to 34.6% in 2023-24 before settling at 34.3% in 2025.

This suggests the issue is not just unemployment among those seeking work. A significant portion of Bihar's young population is not entering the job market in the first place. The intense scramble for government posts coexists with a wider labour-market weakness that keeps many others out of the workforce entirely.