Giving up or taking back control? Inside India’s “lying-flat” generation

Siddharth moved away from UPSC preparation in stages. After graduating in engineering in 2014, he prepared for UPSC, then enrolled in law after two unsuccessful preliminary exams. He continued attempting the examination in 2017 and 2018 before concentrating on law. In his March 2022 interview, he described working in an advocate’s chambers in Delhi. He had not ruled out another attempt, but had stopped making his professional life wait for it.

His account illustrates a change of direction, not how most aspirants fare. He prepared for UPSC. A separate recruitment system, SSC’s Combined Graduate Level examination, shows the scale of competition for another route into government employment.

A crowded examination is also a commitment of time. Even a single recruitment cycle can stretch across the calendar while candidates study, wait for results and decide whether to prepare again.

Aspirants who change direction need somewhere else to go. That makes the next question unavoidable: what opportunities does their qualification offer outside the examination queue?

These rates describe people participating in the labour market. They leave out people who are neither working nor seeking or available for work, a distinction we will return to. They also tell us nothing about the salary a successful applicant eventually accepts.

That salary matters because the first offer sets the starting budget for adult life. There is a real history behind the complaint that some entry-level IT packages still sound familiar decades later. But “India’s starting salary has not changed since 2005” is too broad a claim. Employers, roles, benefits and hiring tracks differ.

The Infosys example shows a modest entry-level offer surviving alongside much better-paid routes. The same 2025 university report lists a ₹9.5 lakh Specialist Programmer package. Neither offer represents every fresher. And ₹3.6 lakh in annual cost to company does not mean ₹30,000 arrives in a bank account each month: employer contributions and other components can sit inside the package.

The practical test of an offer comes after the headline number. Once a person moves for work, how much of that income remains after the ordinary costs of living?

The price level rose 6.17% over these eighteen months. That does not tell us whether a particular salary kept up, or whether a healthy diet became affordable. It does show that maintaining the same purchasing power required more money.

Rent brings the city into the calculation. For someone moving for work, the national price basket can miss the pace of change in a particular rental market. Recent figures from Hyderabad, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Pune and Delhi show how differently those markets moved.

These are market indicators from a property portal, not rent increases faced by every tenant. An existing lease, a shared home or a different neighbourhood can produce a different bill. But a person entering one of these markets meets the rents available now, not the budget they imagined a year earlier.

Covering the monthly bills is only the first test. The next is whether there is enough left to save and whether those savings can survive a large commitment or an unexpected expense.

The report’s model looks beyond young professionals to household income groups. Its implication is still relevant to the transition we are following: buying a home requires enough income to keep paying after the mortgage instalment. A better-paying job, a second household income or a lower interest rate can change that calculation. A graduate’s individual salary should not be mistaken for a household’s combined resources.

Health expenses pose a different kind of threat. They arrive without waiting for the deposit to be saved or the emergency fund to be ready. The question is how much a household must pay after reimbursement, rather than the hospital’s initial invoice alone.

The increase is substantial, but it is not a price index for the same treatment. The two surveys include different mixes of patients, procedures and hospitals. Averages also conceal a wide spread of bills. What these figures establish is a rise in average spending after reimbursements, not that every household experienced the same increase or was pushed into financial ruin.

It is against that background of monthly expenses, housing commitments and the need for a buffer that a couple may consider the next responsibility: supporting a child.

Households reported very different spending for students in government and non-government schools. The contrast does not tell us what every family will pay, or what quality and access look like in their neighbourhood. It does show why the availability of usable public services belongs in a discussion of family finances.

The other budget is time. A household can buy some help, divide the work or have someone reduce paid work to do it. The Time Use Survey shows that domestic work and care are already distributed very unevenly among young women and men.

These activities include caring for household members other than children. They matter here because starting a family adds to an existing division of labour. An offer of paid work does not remove the need to cook, clean or care; someone still has to do it.

That makes “stepping back” a difficult label. A person outside paid employment may be doing indispensable work at home. Before treating the absence of a job as a refusal of ambition, we need to look at what the data actually count.

The large difference between young women and men belongs beside the unpaid-work evidence, not inside a claim that women are more likely to “give up”. The two surveys do not link the same individuals, so the care figures cannot explain every NEET case. They are a reason to ask about responsibilities and barriers before assuming a motive.

Delays also occur among people who have found work. A separate Deloitte survey, whose India Gen Z sample was largely graduates and full-time workers, asked respondents directly about financial pressure and life decisions.

That is closer to the educated working population at the centre of this story, but it remains a limited survey sample. It does not measure the motives of everyone counted as NEET. What it adds is a reported experience: being in work can coexist with postponing a life decision because of money.

And for people who want a family, postponement is not necessarily a change in desire. UNFPA’s India findings ask about the barriers between the family people want and the family they believe they can have.