For much of the last decade, news about the Kashmir Valley has been dominated by politics and security. Less visible but increasingly measurable are quieter shifts in livelihoods, education and public services that point to positive socioeconomic change among the Valley’s majority Muslim population. Reviewing official and government-Think tank linked data shows improvements in tourism, skill-building and public employment drives, rising education indicators, and wider access to central welfare schemes. Taken together these trends do not erase the challenges Kashmir faces, but they do provide an evidence-based counterpoint often missing from international coverage.
Tourism: recovery and scale
Tourism, long a major generator of jobs in the Valley recorded pronounced growth through 2022–2024. Official tallies and local reporting show that tourist footfall in Kashmir rose steadily: roughly 2.67 million visitors in 2022, about 3.16 million in 2023 and close to 3.5 million in 2024, as the Union Territory recorded record annual visitor numbers. That expansion generated revenue for hotels, homestays, transport operators and small suppliers up and down the Valley.
The economic logic is straightforward: tourism creates both direct jobs (hotels, guides, transport, restaurants) and indirect demand (construction, artisan goods, food supplies). Local stakeholders consistently report that even part-time and seasonal employment has risen, creating a buffer for households that previously depended primarily on agriculture or low-paid informal work. However, recent violent incidents in 2025 have shown how fragile tourism-dependent gains can be; the longer-term implication is the need for diversification and resilience planning.
Employment and government recruitment drives
One measurable policy outcome has been the acceleration of public-sector hiring. A central government audit identified more than 33,000 gazetted and non-gazetted vacancies in Jammu & Kashmir; by late 2022 over 25,000 of those posts had been filled under an “accelerated recruitment drive,” signaling active attempts to replenish and expand the public workforce. Filling public vacancies matters in Kashmir not only for incomes but also because government jobs are often formal, stable employment with social security a significant step for households previously in informal or precarious work.
Alongside state recruitment, national skill-development schemes have reached substantial numbers of Valley youth. Official briefings indicate that Jammu & Kashmir has trained hundreds of thousands under flagship programs such as the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY), vocational initiatives and local mission efforts investments intended to translate into employability both inside and outside the region. These skilling efforts are crucial for converting tourism and infrastructure growth into sustainable livelihoods.
Education: higher enrollment and improving literacy
Education indicators present a mixed but encouraging picture. Union-level surveys and Jammu & Kashmir government documents show rising school enrollment drives and higher-education growth in recent years. National periodic surveys have also recorded improvements in literacy for the UT as a whole official data tabled in Parliament cites a literacy rate around the low-80s percent for Jammu & Kashmir in 2023–24. While literacy and school attainment vary by district and gender, the aggregate gains point to improved access and retention in schooling across the Valley.
Improved educational participation matters beyond test scores: it expands the candidate pool for government recruitment, technical training and small-business entrepreneurship. The presence of expanding college enrolments and targeted scholarship and outreach programs helps explain why Valley youth are increasingly visible in vocational courses, private-sector training and professional studies.
Government schemes and welfare reach
Central and UT-level welfare schemes have been a significant vehicle for redistribution in Kashmir. Housing schemes such as the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY), livelihood programs and targeted rural employment schemes show notable beneficiary counts in Jammu & Kashmir. For example, PMAY-Gramin reported tens of thousands of approved beneficiaries in the UT in central listings showing progress on housing access for low-income households. The combination of housing subsidies, employment guarantees, and skill-program placements increases household stability. For many families in the Valley, access to subsidized housing and training converts short-term income gains into durable improvements in living standards and creditworthiness.
Human dimension: what the numbers look like on the ground
Aggregate data is useful, but it only tells part of the story. On the ground, small hotels in Srinagar report fuller occupancy windows during peak season; kayakers and shikara operators on Dal Lake point to larger tourist groups than a few years ago. Young people trained under PMKVY and local skill missions describe short-term placements that often extend into informal entrepreneurship tailoring, small-café ventures, and local guiding services. These human-scale details explain how macro-level programs translate into household decisions: delaying migration, investing in home repairs, or paying for a child’s college fees.
Caveats and the path ahead
Two important caveats temper these positive signs. First, many gains remain uneven across districts, by gender and between urban and rural households. Second, security shocks and geopolitical tensions can quickly reverse fragile gains in tourism and seasonal employment. That vulnerability underscores the need for policy focus on diversification (promoting off-season economic activities), stronger local value chains (processing and crafts), and sustained investment in education and placement services.
Measured against the common international narrative of a region defined solely by unrest, the last three years show that Kashmir Valley also contains incremental, data-backed progress: rising tourist footfall that supplies jobs, government recruitment and skilling schemes that expand formal employment pathways, growing education participation and targeted welfare support that lifts household resilience. These are not panaceas the Valley still faces structural challenges but the numbers and policy outputs from 2021–2024 suggest a tangible, if cautious, socioeconomic shift worth noting in balanced coverage. For policymakers, donors and media alike, the task now is to consolidate these gains deepen skills-to-jobs pipelines, make tourism more resilient, and ensure education and social protection reach the most excluded communities.
