{
  "license": {
    "ours": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
    "terms": "/licence/",
    "note": "Notes, \"Where things stand\" and the record are CC BY 4.0. Excerpts and quotations belong to their owners."
  },
  "no": 3,
  "slug": "india-jobs-unemployment",
  "title": "Who works, who waits, and what the jobs numbers leave out",
  "nativeTitle": {
    "text": "काम है, नौकरी नहीं",
    "lang": "hi"
  },
  "nativePending": null,
  "summary": "Official surveys count low unemployment, but young graduates wait years for salaried posts while millions take up farm work and unpaid family labour. Economists and surveys track who works, at what, and why secure jobs remain scarce.",
  "standfirst": "A record of how many Indians work, who waits for a salaried post, and what the surveys count: educated youth looking for over a year, the rise in unpaid family work, and the farming jobs that came back.",
  "opened": "2026-09-30",
  "closed": null,
  "keptBy": "The editors",
  "url": "/long-view/3-india-jobs-unemployment/",
  "whereThingsStand": {
    "revision": 1,
    "date": "2026-09-30",
    "changed": "The Long View incorporated findings from the 2025 Periodic Labour Force Survey, the State of Working India 2026 report on graduate employment, and research on youth work hours and exam preparation.",
    "body": "The official household surveys count most Indians of working age as in the labour force, with unemployment low, though the survey design changed in 2025. In the [2023-24 Periodic Labour Force Survey](https://www.mospi.gov.in/sites/default/files/press_release/Press_note_AR_PLFS_2023_24_22092024.pdf#page=2), 60.1% of people aged 15 and above were in the labour force, and the unemployment rate was 3.2% for men and women alike. The National Statistics Office changed the survey design for the 2025 calendar year, drawing on a sample roughly 2.65 times larger, and [counted 61.6 crore workers](https://www.mospi.gov.in/uploads/latestReleases/latest_release_1774607827733_3e8964a9-268b-4cc9-ad65-cfc8a9e32f08_Press_note_AR_PLFS_2025_23032025_V2.1_26032026_final.pdf#page=3) on average, with unemployment at 3.1% and participation at 59.3%.\n\nMost Indian workers are self-employed, farming is the largest employer, and most work is informal. Self-employment remains the largest way Indians earn, accounting for 56.2% of workers in 2025, while regular salaried jobs made up 23.6%. Agriculture accounted for 43.0% of all workers in 2025, down from 44.8% the previous year. Across the wider workforce, nearly 82% work in the informal sector and nearly 90% are informally employed, and even among salaried workers only half hold a contract and social security.\n\n\nWomen's labour force participation has risen sharply over the last six years, and the gap with men remains wide. Between 2017-18 and 2023-24, women's labour force participation rose from 23.3% to 41.7%, reversing a long drop from the early 2000s when rural women left agriculture. In the 2025 survey, conducted under the new sampling design, women's participation was 40.0%, compared with 79.1% for men.\n\nThe work women have entered is mostly self-employment and unpaid or subsidiary family work, and joblessness among women is highest in the cities. Of the 83 million jobs added between 2021-22 and 2023-24, 40 million have been in agriculture, with women accounting for a large share (38 million). In rural areas, much of this recent entry into work has been in subsidiary work, and in both rural and urban areas the recent rise has come with a higher share of self-employment among women, such as [dairy farming in Uttar Pradesh](https://www.livemint.com/opinion/online-views/employed-women-uttar-pradesh-self-employed-upliftment-dairy-service-sector-jobs-labour-11782819252940.html), while in cities unemployment among women stood at 7.1% in 2023-24.\n\nResearchers' estimates from the Time Use Survey 2024 show that when unpaid household and care work is added to paid hours, employed young women work 9 hours and 31 minutes a day, compared with 7 hours and 57 minutes for young men.\n\n\nUnemployment is concentrated among the young and educated. More than a third of graduates in their early twenties are unemployed, while joblessness is close to zero for people who cannot read and write. Among young men with a college degree, only 6.7% secure permanent salaried work within a year, the [State of Working India finds](https://publications.azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/6848/1/SWI%202026%20-%20Web.pdf#page=201); Rosa Abraham, one of its authors, says that of graduates who report being unemployed, only 7% secure salaried employment within a year.\n\nThe wait for work has reshaped young people's lives, and some writers link joblessness to political cynicism. In towns like Meerut and Shimla, educated young people spend years \"sitting\" for [government recruitment exams in commercial libraries](https://frontline.thehindu.com/the-nation/educated-unemployment-india-youth/article71252642.ece), taking on prolonged uncertainty to prove to their families that their schooling was not wasted. Debasish Roy Chowdhury and John Keane write in [To Kill a Democracy](https://scroll.in/article/1094500/this-book-asks-if-unemployment-often-translates-to-cynicism-and-desire-for-strong-armed-leadership) that studies show personal joblessness experience often translates into political cynicism and yearnings for strong-armed leadership.\n\n\nFactories have created few jobs, and the young have left farming to older workers. Non-farm sectors have created few good jobs: manufacturing value added grew at 7.5% a year between 2000 and 2019 while manufacturing employment grew at only 1.7%, leaving construction to employ 75 million people compared with 65 million in factories. Vidya Mahambare says only 13% of [young adults now work in agriculture](https://www.livemint.com/opinion/online-views/indian-farms-young-workers-improve-farming-agriculture-technology-modernize-ageing-employees-11784526191785.html), down from 34% twenty years earlier, leaving farming to older workers whose median age reached 40 in 2025.\n\n\nWhere the jobs will come from, and how many are needed, is the open question. [Raghuram Rajan argues](https://frontline.thehindu.com/interviews/raghuram-rajan-india-jobs-industrial-policy-services-growth/article71410314.ece) that India cannot rely on low-skilled factory jobs, which he calls a bus that has already left, and must create employment through services, skills, and domestic demand. Under its most ambitious scenario, the State of Working India projects that providing regular salaried work for young people aged 20 to 29 in 2036 would require 103.2 million jobs, while [an IMF study cited by the World Bank](https://thisindianlife.today/articles/india-jobs-challenge/) estimates that India will need 148 million new jobs by 2030 if female participation keeps rising. ॥"
  },
  "entries": [
    {
      "title": "Employment in India",
      "kind": "report",
      "kindLabel": "Reporting",
      "group": "Reporting",
      "date": "2024-03-18",
      "datePrecision": "day",
      "added": "2026-09-29",
      "note": "Who counts as working in India is settled each year by the Periodic Labour Force Survey, the National Statistics Office’s household survey, and Abhishek Waghmare’s piece for Data For India walks through what that survey counts as work and what it leaves out. Roughly 625 million Indians are in the labour force, about 600 million of them working, and agriculture still employs 280 million. The unemployment rate is 3.2%, and it is highest among the young and the better educated.",
      "citation": null,
      "held": null,
      "figure": null,
      "authors": [
        "Abhishek Waghmare"
      ],
      "photographers": [],
      "publication": "Data For India",
      "excerpt": "The unemployment rate in India is higher among the better educated individuals in the labour force. Among women with a higher education, one in five is likely to be unemployed. However, among illiterate women, less than one in a hundred are unemployed.",
      "url": "https://www.dataforindia.com/work-employment-in-india/",
      "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260716094752/https://www.dataforindia.com/work-employment-in-india/",
      "anchor": "/long-view/3-india-jobs-unemployment/#e-2024-employment-in-india",
      "specimen": false
    },
    {
      "title": "India Employment Report 2024: Youth employment, education and skills",
      "kind": "report",
      "kindLabel": "Reporting",
      "group": "Reporting",
      "date": "2024-03-29",
      "datePrecision": "day",
      "added": "2026-09-29",
      "note": "The India Employment Report 2024 is the third in a series of publications on labour and employment that the Institute for Human Development, New Delhi, brings out with the International Labour Organization. It reads the National Sample Surveys and the Periodic Labour Force Surveys from 2000 to 2022, with a postscript for 2023, and finds that unemployment fell after 2019 while much of the new work was self-employment, unpaid family work and a return to the farm. Among young people, the unemployment rate in 2022 was 29.1 per cent for graduates, nine times the rate for young people who cannot read and write, and its reading of the surveys puts nearly 82 per cent of the workforce in the informal sector.",
      "citation": "ISBN 9789220405826 (print); ISBN 9789220405833 (web PDF)",
      "held": null,
      "figure": null,
      "authors": [
        "Alakh N. Sharma",
        "Ravi Srivastava",
        "Sher Verick",
        "Balwant Singh Mehta",
        "Tanuka Endow",
        "Diksha Tayal",
        "Shipra Nigam"
      ],
      "photographers": [],
      "publication": "India Employment Report",
      "excerpt": "The key labour market indicators in recent years reflect paradoxical improvements. … The slow transition to non-farm employment has reversed. … The share of manufacturing employment was stagnant, at around 12-14 per cent. The increase in non-farm employment was absorbed by construction and services. After 2019, this slow transition reversed due to the pandemic, with a rise in the share of agricultural employment as well as an increase in the absolute size of the agricultural workforce.",
      "url": "https://www.ilo.org/sites/default/files/2024-08/India%20Employment%20-%20web_8%20April.pdf",
      "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260929065715/https://www.ilo.org/sites/default/files/2024-08/India%20Employment%20-%20web_8%20April.pdf",
      "anchor": "/long-view/3-india-jobs-unemployment/#e-2024-india-employment-report-2024-youth",
      "specimen": false
    },
    {
      "title": "Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) – Annual Report [July, 2023 – June, 2024]",
      "kind": "report",
      "kindLabel": "Reporting",
      "group": "Reporting",
      "date": "2024-09-23",
      "datePrecision": "day",
      "added": "2026-09-29",
      "note": "Every year the National Sample Survey Office asks a sample of Indian households who worked, who looked for work and who did neither; this seventh annual report covers July 2023 to June 2024 and draws on 4,18,159 people. The share of women aged 15 and above in the labour force rose from 37.0% to 41.7% in a year, while the unemployment rate was 3.2% for men and women alike.",
      "citation": null,
      "held": null,
      "figure": null,
      "authors": [
        "National Sample Survey Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation"
      ],
      "photographers": [],
      "publication": "Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) Annual Report",
      "excerpt": "Overall LFPR in usual status (ps+ss) for persons of age 15 years and above has increased from 57.9% during July 2022 – June 2023 to 60.1% during July 2023 – June 2024. LFPR for female of age 15 years above in usual status (ps+ss) has increased from 37.0% during July 2022 – June 2023 to 41.7% during July 2023 – June 2024.",
      "url": "https://www.mospi.gov.in/sites/default/files/press_release/Press_note_AR_PLFS_2023_24_22092024.pdf",
      "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260628073532/https://www.mospi.gov.in/sites/default/files/press_release/Press_note_AR_PLFS_2023_24_22092024.pdf",
      "anchor": "/long-view/3-india-jobs-unemployment/#e-2024-periodic-labour-force-survey-plfs",
      "specimen": false
    },
    {
      "title": "Why has female labour force participation in India changed?",
      "kind": "report",
      "kindLabel": "Reporting",
      "group": "Reporting",
      "date": "2025-01-27",
      "datePrecision": "day",
      "added": "2026-09-29",
      "note": "Abhishek Waghmare’s explainer for Data For India follows the share of Indian women who work or look for work from the 1980s to the last five years, and asks where the women who entered went. Rural women who had left farming came back to it, and urban women moved into services. When participation rose among rural women from the 1980s to the 2000s, most of the women added were unpaid helpers in household enterprises; the recent increase has instead come with a higher share of self-employment among women in both rural and urban areas.",
      "citation": null,
      "held": null,
      "figure": null,
      "authors": [
        "Abhishek Waghmare"
      ],
      "photographers": [],
      "publication": "Data For India",
      "excerpt": "The decline in female labour force participation from the early 2000s onwards was heavily driven by the exit of a large number of rural women from agriculture. In recent years, 50 million rural women have returned to agriculture, bringing the level of female employment in agriculture back to its pre-2000s level.",
      "url": "https://www.dataforindia.com/female-lfpr-change/",
      "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260929081013/https://www.dataforindia.com/female-lfpr-change/",
      "anchor": "/long-view/3-india-jobs-unemployment/#e-2025-why-has-female-labour-force",
      "specimen": false
    },
    {
      "title": "What do India's graduates do?",
      "kind": "report",
      "kindLabel": "Reporting",
      "group": "Reporting",
      "date": "2025-11-18",
      "datePrecision": "day",
      "added": "2026-09-29",
      "note": "Abhishek Waghmare reads India’s official employment survey for Data For India to ask what the country’s 140 million graduates do for work: how many have stepped out of the labour force, how many are looking and cannot find anything, and what the rest do, whether salaried, casual, self-employed or unpaid in a family enterprise. Women are the likeliest to have stepped away from work, many of them citing home commitments, and unemployment is highest among graduates in their twenties, where more than a third of those in their early twenties have no job.",
      "citation": null,
      "held": null,
      "figure": null,
      "authors": [
        "Abhishek Waghmare"
      ],
      "photographers": [],
      "publication": "Data For India",
      "excerpt": "While the unemployment rate among graduates is 13%, it is nearly zero among the illiterate population. … Among graduates, the unemployment rate is the highest among those in their twenties, many of whom are likely to be fresh graduates. More than a third of graduates in their early twenties are unemployed.",
      "url": "https://www.dataforindia.com/graduate-employment/",
      "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260713144330/https://www.dataforindia.com/graduate-employment/",
      "anchor": "/long-view/3-india-jobs-unemployment/#e-2025-what-do-indias-graduates-do",
      "specimen": false
    },
    {
      "title": "Salaried jobs in India",
      "kind": "report",
      "kindLabel": "Reporting",
      "group": "Reporting",
      "date": "2026-01-30",
      "datePrecision": "day",
      "added": "2026-09-30",
      "note": "Salaried work is meant to be the good job: one employer, a regular wage, a written contract, a provident fund. Abhishek Waghmare’s page for Data For India goes through what the official surveys record about how many Indians have that arrangement, which jobs the salaried actually hold, and how few of them get the security the label suggests.",
      "citation": null,
      "held": null,
      "figure": null,
      "authors": [
        "Abhishek Waghmare"
      ],
      "photographers": [],
      "publication": "Data For India",
      "excerpt": "One in five Indian workers, or roughly 130 million workers, are in regular wage work or salaried employment. … Salaried jobs are considered to be relatively the most secure types of working arrangements since they provide a regular and stable income, and can have written contracts and employee benefits. Contrary to this commonly held belief, more than half of salaried workers in India (57%) do not have a written employment contract with the employer. One in three salaried workers in the country have long-term contacts with their employers. These are what are also commonly referred to as permanent jobs. This means that only about 6-7% of workers in India are in permanent regular wage employment.",
      "url": "https://www.dataforindia.com/salaried-jobs/",
      "archiveUrl": null,
      "anchor": "/long-view/3-india-jobs-unemployment/#e-2026-salaried-jobs-in-india",
      "specimen": false
    },
    {
      "title": "State of Working India 2026: Youth in the labour market: Pathways from learning to earning",
      "kind": "report",
      "kindLabel": "Reporting",
      "group": "Reporting",
      "date": "2026-03-01",
      "datePrecision": "month",
      "added": "2026-09-29",
      "note": "The Centre for Sustainable Employment at Azim Premji University brings out the State of Working India; this 2026 edition follows young Indians from school and college into work, using National Sample Survey and Periodic Labour Force Survey rounds. Its subject is the gap between degrees and jobs. Graduate unemployment runs at nearly 40% among the 15- to 25-year-olds the report tracks, and of young men who have finished school or college only a small share find secure salaried work within a year of starting to look. The jobs added after the pandemic were almost half in agriculture — 40 million of the 83 million added between 2021–22 and 2023–24 — and the report also traces the migration that carries young workers towards richer states.",
      "citation": "State of Working India (2026). Youth in the labour market: Pathways from learning to earning, Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University.",
      "held": null,
      "figure": null,
      "authors": [
        "Rosa Abraham",
        "Tamoghna Halder",
        "Amit Basole",
        "Anand Shrivastava",
        "Anand Kumar"
      ],
      "photographers": [],
      "publication": "State of Working India",
      "excerpt": "In our sample of young men, we find that only 4% of 12th Standard Pass and 6.7% of college graduates secure some kind of permanent salaried employment within a year. If we consider white collar employment, only 1.5% of 12th Standard Pass and 3.7% of college graduates find white collar employment within a year.",
      "url": "https://publications.azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/6848/1/SWI%202026%20-%20Web.pdf",
      "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260918090414/https://publications.azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/6848/1/SWI%202026%20-%20Web.pdf",
      "anchor": "/long-view/3-india-jobs-unemployment/#e-2026-state-of-working-india-2026",
      "specimen": false
    },
    {
      "title": "Press Note on Periodic Labour Force Survey Annual Report, 2025 [January 2025 – December 2025]",
      "kind": "report",
      "kindLabel": "Reporting",
      "group": "Reporting",
      "date": "2026-03-27",
      "datePrecision": "day",
      "added": "2026-09-29",
      "note": "This is the National Statistics Office’s annual labour force report, the first to cover a calendar year rather than the July–June agricultural year, and the first drawn from a sample about 2.65 times larger than the old one. It counts 61.6 crore people in work on average during the year, 41.6 crore of them men and 20.0 crore women. Participation was steady at 59.3% and unemployment at 3.1%, and the office warns that the new sampling design may shift the level of the estimates, so the 2025 numbers may not be strictly comparable with earlier annual reports.",
      "citation": null,
      "held": null,
      "figure": null,
      "authors": [
        "National Statistics Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India"
      ],
      "photographers": [],
      "publication": "Periodic Labour Force Survey Annual Report",
      "excerpt": "Among male, 69.8% reported want to continue studies as the main reason for not being in the labour force, whereas among female, 44.4% cited child care/personal commitments in homemaking as the main reason.",
      "url": "https://www.mospi.gov.in/uploads/latestReleases/latest_release_1774607827733_3e8964a9-268b-4cc9-ad65-cfc8a9e32f08_Press_note_AR_PLFS_2025_23032025_V2.1_26032026_final.pdf",
      "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260815060120/https://www.mospi.gov.in/uploads/latestReleases/latest_release_1774607827733_3e8964a9-268b-4cc9-ad65-cfc8a9e32f08_Press_note_AR_PLFS_2025_23032025_V2.1_26032026_final.pdf",
      "anchor": "/long-view/3-india-jobs-unemployment/#e-2026-press-note-on-periodic-labour",
      "specimen": false
    },
    {
      "title": "Are young Indians under or overworked? Both are true but AI may change work hours as we go along",
      "kind": "report",
      "kindLabel": "Reporting",
      "group": "Reporting",
      "date": "2026-04-14",
      "datePrecision": "day",
      "added": "2026-09-29",
      "note": "Two economists take India’s 2024 Time Use Survey and ask how long young Indians actually work, and find the hours running in both directions at once: long days for some, very short ones for others. Vidya Mahambare and Poonam Munjal draw on their paper ‘Young Adults at Work in India’ to split those hours by gender and by whether the work sits in a formal enterprise or a household one, and to ask what AI adoption may do to the gap.",
      "citation": null,
      "held": null,
      "figure": null,
      "authors": [
        "Vidya Mahambare",
        "Poonam Munjal"
      ],
      "photographers": [],
      "publication": "Mint",
      "excerpt": "However, while employed young men on average work longer for pay, if unpaid household and care work is added, employed young women work longer hours—9 hours and 31 minutes, versus 7 hours and 57 minutes spent by young men.",
      "url": "https://www.livemint.com/opinion/online-views/young-indians-underworked-overworked-ai-work-hours-time-use-survey-gender-disparity-11776065245667.html",
      "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260809032553/https://www.livemint.com/opinion/online-views/young-indians-underworked-overworked-ai-work-hours-time-use-survey-gender-disparity-11776065245667.html",
      "anchor": "/long-view/3-india-jobs-unemployment/#e-2026-are-young-indians-under-or",
      "specimen": false
    },
    {
      "title": "The employment profile of India’s young adults",
      "kind": "report",
      "kindLabel": "Reporting",
      "group": "Reporting",
      "date": "2026-05-05",
      "datePrecision": "day",
      "added": "2026-09-29",
      "note": "Four researchers, two at the Great Lakes Institute of Management and two at the National Council of Applied Economic Research, work through their own estimates from the Time Use Survey 2024 on how India’s young adults spend their working days. The piece belongs in this Long View because it counts hours rather than jobs alone: the time at paid work, the time spent getting to it, and the unpaid time at home that no employment figure carries. What they describe is a young labour market pulled between extreme overwork and underemployment.",
      "citation": null,
      "held": null,
      "figure": null,
      "authors": [
        "Vidya Mahambare",
        "Niharika Gowthaman",
        "Poonam Munjal",
        "Palash Baruah"
      ],
      "photographers": [],
      "publication": "BusinessLine",
      "excerpt": "Men clock more paid hours of work than women, on average, in both formal and informal enterprises. However, upon including unpaid household and care work, this pattern completely reverses, with women working over 9 hours 31 minutes compared to men’s 7 hours 57 minutes. The jump in women’s work hours by nearly 4 hours per day, compared to the 30-minute increase among men, is drastic.",
      "url": "https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/the-employment-profile-of-indias-young-adults/article70942922.ece",
      "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260505160237/https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/the-employment-profile-of-indias-young-adults/article70942922.ece",
      "anchor": "/long-view/3-india-jobs-unemployment/#e-2026-the-employment-profile-of-indias",
      "specimen": false
    },
    {
      "title": "Elusive jobs: how AI will demand even greater patience of India’s unemployed youth",
      "kind": "report",
      "kindLabel": "Reporting",
      "group": "Reporting",
      "date": "2026-05-11",
      "datePrecision": "day",
      "added": "2026-09-29",
      "note": "Vidya Mahambare of the Great Lakes Institute of Management and Asrar Alam of the National Council for Applied Economic Research use Periodic Labour Survey data for 2025 to look at how long young Indians wait for work. In Rajasthan, Assam, Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal, two-thirds or more of unemployed young adults in their 20s had been looking for over a year, and unemployment climbs with education; the authors expect AI to stretch the wait further. Women, they write, will be the first to stop looking if the financial return does not justify the effort and time.",
      "citation": null,
      "held": null,
      "figure": null,
      "authors": [
        "Vidya Mahambare",
        "Asrar Alam"
      ],
      "photographers": [],
      "publication": "Mint",
      "excerpt": "The most concerning fact, set to get worse with the advent of AI, is that as education levels rise, so does the unemployment rate. … Among the young adults who are not currently in education, graduates account for one-fourth. However, they account for two-thirds of the unemployed. The graduate unemployment rate is 23.6%, more than twice the overall rate of about 10% in this age bracket and five times the secondary-educated joblessness rate of 4.3%.",
      "url": "https://www.livemint.com/opinion/online-views/elusive-jobs-ai-india-unemployed-youth-job-search-employment-plfs-time-artificial-intelligence-skills-degree-11778403439489.html",
      "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260929062535/https://www.livemint.com/opinion/online-views/elusive-jobs-ai-india-unemployed-youth-job-search-employment-plfs-time-artificial-intelligence-skills-degree-11778403439489.html",
      "anchor": "/long-view/3-india-jobs-unemployment/#e-2026-elusive-jobs-how-ai-will",
      "specimen": false
    },
    {
      "title": "Salary freeze",
      "kind": "report",
      "kindLabel": "Newsletter post",
      "group": "Reporting",
      "date": "2026-05-13",
      "datePrecision": "day",
      "added": "2026-09-30",
      "note": "A Data For India newsletter on what happened to Indian salaries over the decade to 2024. Using the national Consumer Price Index to deflate survey wage data, Abhishek Waghmare found that the monthly average salary rose about 90% in nominal terms from 2012 to 2024 but fell 4% once inflation is accounted for, with high-earning occupations such as software developers and college teachers losing ground while clerks, drivers, domestic workers and garment workers gained slightly.",
      "citation": null,
      "held": null,
      "figure": null,
      "authors": [
        "Rukmini S"
      ],
      "photographers": [],
      "publication": "Data For India",
      "excerpt": "He finds that the monthly average salary in India increased by about 90% from 2012 to 2024 in nominal terms, meaning that it nearly doubled in just over a decade. But adjusting for inflation, the average salary actually fell 4% over the period. … Driving this fall was a decline in the inflation-adjusted wages of people in high-skilled and high-earning jobs in particular. So the inflation-adjusted incomes of office clerks, drivers, domestic workers and garment workers actually grew slightly from 2012 to 2024. Software developers, college teachers, and protective services workers such as police personnel across the private and public sectors, on the other hand, saw their real incomes fall.",
      "url": "https://www.dataforindia.com/the-big-shift/salary-freeze/",
      "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260930010427/https://www.dataforindia.com/the-big-shift/salary-freeze/",
      "anchor": "/long-view/3-india-jobs-unemployment/#e-2026-salary-freeze",
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    },
    {
      "title": "Rosa & Tamoghana on India's Youth Employment Crisis",
      "kind": "report",
      "kindLabel": "Podcast",
      "group": "Reporting",
      "date": "2026-05-19",
      "datePrecision": "day",
      "added": "2026-09-29",
      "note": "Kashish Kapoor put questions to two of the authors of Azim Premji University’s State of Working India 2026 report: Rosa Abraham and Tamoghna Halder, both economists at the university. The paradox they start from is that graduate unemployment among the youth is 40%, against 3% for illiterates. The conversation earns its place in this Long View where the authors push back on the obvious reading of their own numbers, and where Halder admits he does not know whether a salaried job is still the dream of India’s youngest workers.",
      "citation": null,
      "held": null,
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      "authors": [
        "Kashish Kapoor",
        "Rosa Abraham",
        "Tamoghna Halder"
      ],
      "photographers": [],
      "publication": "Subtext by Zerodha",
      "excerpt": "The more worrying number, she said, is what happens after the wait. Track young graduates who report being unemployed, and within a year only 7% secure salaried employment. That’s the real cause for concern: not the headline unemployment rate, but the fact that even when graduates do find work, very few find the kind of work they were hoping for.",
      "url": "https://subtextbyzerodha.substack.com/p/rosa-and-tamoghana-on-indias-youth",
      "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260929070835/https://subtextbyzerodha.substack.com/p/rosa-and-tamoghana-on-indias-youth",
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    },
    {
      "title": "Does India really have the biggest jobs challenge in the world?",
      "kind": "report",
      "kindLabel": "Reporting",
      "group": "Reporting",
      "date": "2026-06-27",
      "datePrecision": "day",
      "added": "2026-09-29",
      "note": "Written by the editor of Life in India for This Indian Life. A World Bank report projects that about 238 million Indians will reach working age between 2025 and 2035, the largest wave of new workers in the developing world. The article notes that the same report cites an IMF study putting the jobs India needs by 2030 at 60 million if labour-force participation stays flat and 148 million if it rises, which largely means more women joining the workforce.",
      "citation": null,
      "held": null,
      "figure": null,
      "authors": [
        "Bhuvanesh"
      ],
      "photographers": [],
      "publication": "This Indian Life",
      "excerpt": "If India’s labour-force participation rate stays flat, the country would need about 60 million new jobs by 2030. But if participation rises toward a target rate, which largely means more women joining the workforce, the number jumps to 148 million.",
      "url": "https://thisindianlife.today/articles/india-jobs-challenge/",
      "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260929065226/https://thisindianlife.today/articles/india-jobs-challenge/",
      "anchor": "/long-view/3-india-jobs-unemployment/#e-2026-does-india-really-have-the",
      "specimen": false
    },
    {
      "title": "Employed women in Uttar Pradesh—what explains such a large increase within less than a decade?",
      "kind": "report",
      "kindLabel": "Reporting",
      "group": "Reporting",
      "date": "2026-07-01",
      "datePrecision": "day",
      "added": "2026-09-29",
      "note": "An opinion piece in Mint by Vidya Mahambare and Vivek Jadhav asks what lies behind the sharp rise in women’s employment in Uttar Pradesh. Working from official data, the authors trace most of the increase to agriculture and livestock, led by self-employment in dairy farming alongside growth in crop farming, and find that industry and service jobs for women remain few. It earns its place in this Long View for the distinction it draws between women finding work and women finding paid, secure work.",
      "citation": null,
      "held": null,
      "figure": null,
      "authors": [
        "Vidya Mahambare",
        "Vivek Jadhav"
      ],
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      "publication": "Mint",
      "excerpt": "The single largest contributor to UP’s rise in women’s employment is growth among those who are self-employed in the animal-rearing sector, mainly dairy farming. The share of working-age women employed in animal farming in UP climbed from 2.3% to 10.2%, more than quadrupling. … Nonetheless, it is concerning that only 10% of working-age women in UP are employed in industry or the service sector, the two sectors that tend to offer better-paid work and social security.",
      "url": "https://www.livemint.com/opinion/online-views/employed-women-uttar-pradesh-self-employed-upliftment-dairy-service-sector-jobs-labour-11782819252940.html",
      "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260802195517/https://www.livemint.com/opinion/online-views/employed-women-uttar-pradesh-self-employed-upliftment-dairy-service-sector-jobs-labour-11782819252940.html",
      "anchor": "/long-view/3-india-jobs-unemployment/#e-2026-employed-women-in-uttar-pradesh",
      "specimen": false
    },
    {
      "title": "Indian farms have been losing their young workers—at a time they need the youth to improve farming",
      "kind": "report",
      "kindLabel": "Reporting",
      "group": "Reporting",
      "date": "2026-07-20",
      "datePrecision": "day",
      "added": "2026-09-29",
      "note": "Vidya Mahambare and Vivek Jadhav go through Periodic Labour Force Survey data to ask who still works on Indian farms, and find that the young have largely left. Writing in Mint, they argue that the renewed official call to move workers out of agriculture would leave farming to older hands, at a time when farms need people who can run a tractor, manage drip irrigation and read soil sensors. Their case is that farm earnings, machinery and the consolidation of small plots matter more than the size of the farm workforce.",
      "citation": null,
      "held": null,
      "figure": null,
      "authors": [
        "Vidya Mahambare",
        "Vivek Jadhav"
      ],
      "photographers": [],
      "publication": "Mint",
      "excerpt": "The median age of a farm worker in India in 2025 was 40 years. It has increased by five years over the last two decades. … A typical farm worker in Kerala was 53 years old; and in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, 48. … If we exclude animal husbandry, barely 13% of young adults now work on farms and other primary sectors.",
      "url": "https://www.livemint.com/opinion/online-views/indian-farms-young-workers-improve-farming-agriculture-technology-modernize-ageing-employees-11784526191785.html",
      "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260907162529/https://www.livemint.com/opinion/online-views/indian-farms-young-workers-improve-farming-agriculture-technology-modernize-ageing-employees-11784526191785.html",
      "anchor": "/long-view/3-india-jobs-unemployment/#e-2026-indian-farms-have-been-losing",
      "specimen": false
    },
    {
      "title": "Educated Unemployment: Why India’s Youth Are ‘Sitting’",
      "kind": "report",
      "kindLabel": "Reporting",
      "group": "Reporting",
      "date": "2026-07-22",
      "datePrecision": "day",
      "added": "2026-09-29",
      "note": "Nilanjana Sen and Avishek Jha did ethnographic fieldwork in Shimla and Meerut among graduates preparing for government exams. They argue that the wait for work has changed shape since Craig Jeffrey described a “timepass” generation in Meerut: young people now “sit”, a discipline that shows their families the money spent on their education was not wasted, and the commercial libraries where they sit have turned that sitting into a business.",
      "citation": null,
      "held": null,
      "figure": null,
      "authors": [
        "Nilanjana Sen",
        "Avishek Jha"
      ],
      "photographers": [],
      "publication": "Frontline",
      "excerpt": "Sitting is not simply another way of describing exam preparation; it has become a way of living through prolonged uncertainty. Sitting now defines the everyday lives of educated unemployed youth across India. It grows out of a crisis of employment and opportunity, and it demands a form of continuous self-work… At the same time, sitting signifies stasis: it carries the emotional and temporal weight of prolonged preparation.",
      "url": "https://frontline.thehindu.com/the-nation/educated-unemployment-india-youth/article71252642.ece",
      "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260929083127/https://frontline.thehindu.com/the-nation/educated-unemployment-india-youth/article71252642.ece",
      "anchor": "/long-view/3-india-jobs-unemployment/#e-2026-educated-unemployment-why-indias-youth",
      "specimen": false
    },
    {
      "title": "To Kill a Democracy: India’s Passage to Despotism",
      "kind": "book",
      "kindLabel": "Book",
      "group": "Books and film",
      "date": "2026-07-27",
      "datePrecision": "day",
      "added": "2026-09-29",
      "note": "Debasish Roy Chowdhury and John Keane’s book To Kill a Democracy, excerpted here by Scroll.in, puts India’s jobs crisis at the centre of its politics. Union membership and influence have shrunk, collective bargaining is fast becoming a relic from the past, and formal jobs have grown more casual. Educated young people who cannot find work, the authors write, are raw material for political parties and private armies.",
      "citation": null,
      "held": null,
      "figure": null,
      "authors": [
        "Debasish Roy Chowdhury",
        "John Keane"
      ],
      "photographers": [],
      "publication": "Scroll.in",
      "excerpt": "Studies by historians and statisticians armed with large country samples show that personal joblessness experience often translates into political cynicism and yearnings for strong-armed leadership. When promised equality but given slavery, people are tempted to conclude that democracies are indecisive and breed too much quibbling, and that a leader who doesn’t bother with the niceties of Parliament and elections is preferable.",
      "url": "https://scroll.in/article/1094500/this-book-asks-if-unemployment-often-translates-to-cynicism-and-desire-for-strong-armed-leadership",
      "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260911232126/https://scroll.in/article/1094500/this-book-asks-if-unemployment-often-translates-to-cynicism-and-desire-for-strong-armed-leadership",
      "anchor": "/long-view/3-india-jobs-unemployment/#e-2026-to-kill-a-democracy-indias",
      "specimen": false
    },
    {
      "title": "Raghuram Rajan: India’s Jobs Crisis Needs a New Growth Model",
      "kind": "report",
      "kindLabel": "Reporting",
      "group": "Reporting",
      "date": "2026-09-01",
      "datePrecision": "day",
      "added": "2026-09-29",
      "note": "Raghuram Rajan, the former RBI governor, tells Frontline that India keeps trying to board a bus that has already left, low-skilled manufacturing, and that the jobs will instead come from service work, ranging from low-skilled posts like security guards to moderate-skill ones like cooks and waiters, and from the small-town compounder who could be trained to provide first-line medical services. He wants public money in skills and universities, and he has little patience for production-linked incentives that pick sectors without saying why they were picked. He argues that India is, for the first time, a poor $4 trillion economy, big enough to grow on what its own people buy.",
      "citation": null,
      "held": null,
      "figure": null,
      "authors": [
        "Rohit Inani"
      ],
      "photographers": [],
      "publication": "Frontline",
      "excerpt": "I am not against manufacturing; let’s get as many jobs as we can, wherever. But think for a second. 2,00,000 jobs? That’s a pimple on the dimple of India’s jobs requirement. It is minuscule. You just said 38 million women returned to self-employment in agriculture.",
      "url": "https://frontline.thehindu.com/interviews/raghuram-rajan-india-jobs-industrial-policy-services-growth/article71410314.ece",
      "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260906095717/https://frontline.thehindu.com/interviews/raghuram-rajan-india-jobs-industrial-policy-services-growth/article71410314.ece",
      "anchor": "/long-view/3-india-jobs-unemployment/#e-2026-raghuram-rajan-indias-jobs-crisis",
      "specimen": false
    },
    {
      "title": "The Truth About India’s Jobs Crisis",
      "kind": "report",
      "kindLabel": "Podcast",
      "group": "Reporting",
      "date": "2026-09-01",
      "datePrecision": "day",
      "added": "2026-09-29",
      "note": "Vidya Mahambare, an economist at the Great Lakes Institute of Management in Chennai, tells Milan Vaishnav why the protests that began over higher education touched a wider frustration about work. She argues that the young have already left farming, that factories stand far from where the workers now live, and that women’s rising employment in Uttar Pradesh is mostly dairy work at home. The conversation opens the sixteenth season of Grand Tamasha, a podcast of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Hindustan Times. The transcript is machine-made and may carry errors.",
      "citation": null,
      "held": null,
      "figure": null,
      "authors": [
        "Milan Vaishnav",
        "Vidya Mahambare"
      ],
      "photographers": [],
      "publication": "Grand Tamasha",
      "excerpt": "And what do we mean by wait, you know, perhaps India is the only country where you have 20% plus youth unemployment, which magically disappears by the time they become late 20s. I would struggle to think any country where that would happen. Like if you see Indian data, there is almost no unemployment at all between any kind of like any men, educated, uneducated, men or women once they come to 30s.",
      "url": "https://carnegieendowment.org/podcasts/grand-tamasha/the-truth-about-indias-jobs-crisis",
      "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260906100123/https://carnegieendowment.org/podcasts/grand-tamasha/the-truth-about-indias-jobs-crisis",
      "anchor": "/long-view/3-india-jobs-unemployment/#e-2026-the-truth-about-indias-jobs",
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  ],
  "related": []
}