New Delhi:
“I did everything right. Why doesn’t it add up? As someone who is overqualified and still underpaid, I feel this quiet mix of anger and helplessness that never really leaves…”
That’s how Anoushka Tyagi, a young job aspirant interning in Delhi, describes her present. 98% in Class 12. A reputed college under University of Delhi. First division. A carefully followed script of what “success” should look like.
Yet, her biggest worry today is not performance. It is dignity. “The way my degree, my effort… all shrink down to a salary that doesn’t match the life they imagined for me.”
Her fear is not personal. It is statistical.
A new study by hiring platform Unstop has found that while 73 per cent of undergraduate freshers expect salaries above Rs 5 lakh per annum (LPA), only 40 per cent actually secure it.
The gap between aspiration and outcome has rarely been this wide.
Expectation vs Reality (In Numbers)
The Unstop Talent Report 2026, based on inputs from 500+ HR leaders and 37,000+ students, shows this is not a hiring slowdown. In fact, 88 per cent of companies are in hiring mode and 90 per cent have maintained or increased hiring budgets. Yet placements tell a different story:
- 84% of UG students are still unplaced
- 85% of engineering students are unplaced
- 17% of UG students faced offer delays or rescinded offers
- Only 14% freshers get salaries above Rs 9 LPA, though 60% expect it
- The traditional degree premium is shrinking:
- 30% MBAs earn below Rs 10 LPA
- 39% engineers earn below Rs 7 LPA
This is not a cyclical dip. The report calls it a structural shift.
‘India Inc. Is Done Paying For Potential’
Ankit Aggarwal, Founder & CEO of Unstop, puts it bluntly: “The salary gap isn’t a market crash; it’s a structural correction. For too long, pedigree was a proxy for pay. India Inc. is done paying for ‘potential’. They are hiring for ‘Day One’ contribution.”
Recruiters, he says, no longer care about CGPA or college tags. They want proof of capability.
The report backs this: 64 per cent of HR leaders now define premium talent by AI/ML, Data, Cloud and Cybersecurity skills, not pedigree. In fact, 94 per cent of employers say they have moved beyond pure pedigree hiring.
Skills > Degree is no longer a slogan. It is a salary determinant.
‘AI Eroding Entry-Level Salaries’
Dr Poornima Gupta, PGDM Director (Organisational Behaviour) at Great Lakes Institute of Management, Gurgaon, points to a deeper disruption: “Technology, particularly AI, is eroding the bottom layer. Companies are experimenting if they can do away with that bracket, and automate entry-level tasks.”
This explains a paradox in the report:
- 80-86 per cent students are already using GenAI for job applications and interviews
- But 55 per cent of UG and 46 per cent of engineering students have no formal AI training
- Meanwhile, 57 per cent of companies use AI for screening and 55 per cent for AI-led interviews
Students are using AI to get jobs. Companies are using AI to filter them out. And in between, entry-level roles are getting compressed. “For youngsters, they will have to accept lower salaries. The number of high-paying jobs is limited, while the cost of education keeps rising,” Dr Gupta says.
Why this hurts UG students the most? The data shows the pain is sharpest at the undergraduate level:
- 84 per cent unplaced
- Highest offer disruption (17 per cent)
- Lowest campus access to recruiters
- Highest sensitivity to pay opacity and rude interviewers
- 48 per cent say they may leave within one year of joining
UG students are also 2X more likely to prefer government jobs or consider studying further, simply because the private job market feels unpredictable.
This is where Anoushka’s words echo the report: “It feels like a gamble where the odds are quietly stacked against you.”
Data From Unstop Talent Report
Students Are Pragmatic. The System Isn’t.
Interestingly, over 90 per cent of students say they are willing to accept a lower CTC if it offers better learning and growth. Their top motivator is learning, not pay. Their top quit reason later is no growth, not compensation.
But HR teams rank salary mismatch as their last concern, while students rank pay opacity as the #1 red flag. The mismatch is not in hiring. It is in expectations, communication, and design.
“Maybe the return on education will come from entrepreneurship” Dr Gupta offers a stark, but practical suggestion: “I recommend students become entrepreneurs after taking some experience. That’s where the return on money — on education — will come in.”
With layoffs, AI automation, and geopolitical uncertainty making companies conservative, she believes the traditional campus-to-corporate pipeline will remain volatile. The safer path, she suggests, may be to learn inside a system briefly, then build outside it.
‘Weight Of Disappointment’
“Sometimes I feel like I’m not just struggling to build a career, I’m also carrying the weight of their disappointment,” says Anoushka. Her story is no longer an exception. It is a pattern now visible in data.
Nikhar Arora, Founder & CEO of Mentoria, said, “Students as young as 15 start choosing their streams, start targeting and getting into colleges as early as age 17, and later, start taking loans, their first real loan, expected to be Rs 10-15 lakh, by age 19. The evidence that students gather first-hand salary data is accurate as of 2018. Majority Jobs, a top job aggregation and analytics platform, positions the starting salaries of IT services to be stagnant to this date, and places them no higher than Rs 3.3-4.5 lakh per annum.”
Effectively, GenZ did everything it was told to do. But the rules of the game changed quietly — from degrees to deployable skills, from potential to proof, from campus to competition platforms, and from entry-level roles to AI-filtered work.
And until colleges, companies, and students realign to this new reality, the Rs 5 LPA dream will remain, for most freshers, just a dream.