Long View 3Open, 20 entriessince 30 September 2026
Who works, who waits, and what the jobs numbers leave outकाम है, नौकरी नहीं
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. Kept by the editors.
The official household surveys count most Indians of working age as in the , with low, though the survey design changed in 2025. In the 2023-24 Periodic Labour Force Survey, 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 on average, with unemployment at 3.1% and participation at 59.3%.
Most Indian workers are , farming is the largest employer, and most work is . 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.
Women's work.Women’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.
The work women have entered is mostly self-employment and unpaid or 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, while in cities unemployment among women stood at 7.1% in 2023-24.
Researchers’ 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.
Young and waiting.Unemployment 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; Rosa Abraham, one of its authors, says that of graduates who report being unemployed, only 7% secure salaried employment within a year.
The 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, 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 that studies show personal joblessness experience often translates into political cynicism and yearnings for strong-armed leadership.
Back to the farm.Factories 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, down from 34% twenty years earlier, leaving farming to older workers whose median age reached 40 in 2025.
What would change it.Where the jobs will come from, and how many are needed, is the open question.Raghuram Rajan argues 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 estimates that India will need 148 million new jobs by 2030 if female participation keeps rising.॥
Words used here
Words underlined with dots above open their explanation. All of them are here.
Periodic Labour Force Survey PLFS India’s official survey of work, in which the National Statistics Office asks a sample of households who worked, who looked for work and who did neither.
India’s official survey of work, in which the National Statistics Office asks a sample of households who worked, who looked for work and who did neither.
How it is worked out
Survey staff visit a sample of households across the country and ask every member about their activity. From the answers the National Statistics Office estimates how many Indians work, what kind of work they do, how many are looking for work, and what they earn. It has run since 2017-18, and its annual report is the source of most official figures on jobs in India.
Read with care
The survey looks at work through two lenses. "Usual status" asks what a person mostly did over the past year, plus any side work of 30 days or more; "current weekly status" asks about the past seven days. The two give different numbers, so check which one a figure uses. From 2025 the survey covers the calendar year with a larger sample, so compare years on either side of the change with care.
Labour force participation rate LFPR The share of people aged 15 and above who either have work or are looking for it.
The share of people aged 15 and above who either have work or are looking for it.
How it is worked out
Everyone who worked, or who looked for work or was available for it, is "in the labour force". Everyone else is outside it: students, people who only keep house, the retired, the ill. The rate is the labour force divided by all people of that age. In the official survey, a person who worked for 30 days or more in the past year counts as working.
For example
Take a town of 1,000 people aged 15 and above. 590 have some work, 20 are looking for it, and the other 390 are studying, keeping house or retired. The labour force is 590 + 20 = 610, so the participation rate is 610 ÷ 1,000 = 61%.
Read with care
Cooking, cleaning and caring for children or the old at home, without pay, does not count as work here, so the measure misses much of what women do. A rise can mean more women taking paid jobs, or more women counted for a few weeks of work on the family farm; which one it is matters, and the rate alone does not say.
Unemployment rate The share of people in the labour force who wanted work and could not find any.
The share of people in the labour force who wanted work and could not find any.
How it is worked out
It is worked out on the labour force, not on the whole population: the number of people looking for or available for work, and without it, divided by everyone who is working or looking. People who are not looking at all, such as students, do not count as unemployed.
For example
In a town where 590 people work and 20 are looking for work, the labour force is 610, and the unemployment rate is 20 ÷ 610, or about 3.3%.
Read with care
A low rate in India does not mean everyone has a good job. Most people cannot afford to stay without work, so they take whatever there is: a few days on a farm, help in a family shop. Anyone who worked 30 days in the past year counts as employed. The rate is highest among the young and the educated, who can wait for the job they want.
Self-employed, salaried and casual work The official survey sorts every worker into one of three kinds of work, by how they are paid.
The official survey sorts every worker into one of three kinds of work, by how they are paid.
How it is worked out
The self-employed run their own farm, shop or trade, or help in a family enterprise; they include unpaid helpers. Regular wage or salaried workers are paid a regular wage by an employer, month after month. Casual workers are paid by the day or the job, on someone else’s farm or site, and have no promise of work tomorrow.
For example
A woman who milks the family’s buffaloes and helps sell the milk is self-employed, even if she is never paid. A clerk paid every month by a shop is a salaried worker. A man hired at the labour chowk for a day’s work on a building site is a casual worker.
Read with care
"Self-employed" holds both the owner of a thriving business and an unpaid helper on the family plot, so a rise in self-employment can mean more family work rather than more businesses. And a salaried job is not always a secure one: many have no written contract or social security.
Informal sector and informal employment Work without the protections of a formal job, such as a written contract, paid leave or a provident fund.
Work without the protections of a formal job, such as a written contract, paid leave or a provident fund.
How it is worked out
Two measures are often confused. The informal sector is about the enterprise: small unregistered businesses owned by a person or partners, such as a kirana shop or a tailoring unit. Informal employment is about the job: work with no written contract, no paid leave and no social security, wherever it is done, including in a large company or a government office.
For example
A driver employed through a contractor by a large company, with no provident fund and no paid leave, works in the formal sector but is informally employed. A salaried accountant at a small family firm who has a contract and a provident fund works in the informal sector but holds a formal job.
Read with care
Because they measure different things, the two shares differ, and both are large: most Indian work is informal by either count. Check which one a figure uses before comparing it with another.
Subsidiary work Work a person did on the side, for at least 30 days in the past year, alongside what they mostly did.
Work a person did on the side, for at least 30 days in the past year, alongside what they mostly did.
How it is worked out
The official survey first asks what a person spent most of the past year doing: working, looking for work, or neither. That is their principal status. If, besides that, they worked for 30 days or more, that is subsidiary work, and it is enough to count them as a worker.
For example
A woman who spent most of the year keeping house, but worked six weeks in the harvest, is counted as a worker by her subsidiary status.
Read with care
Thirty days of work and three hundred count the same in the headline figure. Much of the recent rise in women’s work has come as subsidiary work, so read a rise in the numbers together with how much and what kind of work lies behind it.
Real and nominal wages A nominal wage is the number of rupees paid; a real wage is that pay adjusted for rising prices, so it shows what the money can buy.
A nominal wage is the number of rupees paid; a real wage is that pay adjusted for rising prices, so it shows what the money can buy.
How it is worked out
Take the pay in rupees and divide it by a price index, such as the Consumer Price Index, which tracks what a fixed basket of food, fuel, rent and other things costs. The result is the pay in the prices of one chosen year, so wages from different years can be compared fairly.
For example
A salary rises from ₹10,000 in 2014 to ₹15,000 in 2024: 50% more rupees. If prices rose 60% over the same years, the 2024 salary buys what ₹15,000 ÷ 1.6 = ₹9,375 bought in 2014. In real terms, the pay has fallen by about 6%.
Read with care
The answer depends on the price index: rural and urban prices rise at different speeds, and no basket matches every family’s spending. An average wage can also rise while most workers’ pay stands still, if the best paid gain the most.
The share of people aged 15 and above who either have work or are looking for it.
How it is worked out
Everyone who worked, or who looked for work or was available for it, is "in the labour force". Everyone else is outside it: students, people who only keep house, the retired, the ill. The rate is the labour force divided by all people of that age. In the official survey, a person who worked for 30 days or more in the past year counts as working.
For example
Take a town of 1,000 people aged 15 and above. 590 have some work, 20 are looking for it, and the other 390 are studying, keeping house or retired. The labour force is 590 + 20 = 610, so the participation rate is 610 ÷ 1,000 = 61%.
Read with care
Cooking, cleaning and caring for children or the old at home, without pay, does not count as work here, so the measure misses much of what women do. A rise can mean more women taking paid jobs, or more women counted for a few weeks of work on the family farm; which one it is matters, and the rate alone does not say.
The share of people in the labour force who wanted work and could not find any.
How it is worked out
It is worked out on the labour force, not on the whole population: the number of people looking for or available for work, and without it, divided by everyone who is working or looking. People who are not looking at all, such as students, do not count as unemployed.
For example
In a town where 590 people work and 20 are looking for work, the labour force is 610, and the unemployment rate is 20 ÷ 610, or about 3.3%.
Read with care
A low rate in India does not mean everyone has a good job. Most people cannot afford to stay without work, so they take whatever there is: a few days on a farm, help in a family shop. Anyone who worked 30 days in the past year counts as employed. The rate is highest among the young and the educated, who can wait for the job they want.
The official survey sorts every worker into one of three kinds of work, by how they are paid.
How it is worked out
The self-employed run their own farm, shop or trade, or help in a family enterprise; they include unpaid helpers. Regular wage or salaried workers are paid a regular wage by an employer, month after month. Casual workers are paid by the day or the job, on someone else’s farm or site, and have no promise of work tomorrow.
For example
A woman who milks the family’s buffaloes and helps sell the milk is self-employed, even if she is never paid. A clerk paid every month by a shop is a salaried worker. A man hired at the labour chowk for a day’s work on a building site is a casual worker.
Read with care
"Self-employed" holds both the owner of a thriving business and an unpaid helper on the family plot, so a rise in self-employment can mean more family work rather than more businesses. And a salaried job is not always a secure one: many have no written contract or social security.
Work without the protections of a formal job, such as a written contract, paid leave or a provident fund.
How it is worked out
Two measures are often confused. The informal sector is about the enterprise: small unregistered businesses owned by a person or partners, such as a kirana shop or a tailoring unit. Informal employment is about the job: work with no written contract, no paid leave and no social security, wherever it is done, including in a large company or a government office.
For example
A driver employed through a contractor by a large company, with no provident fund and no paid leave, works in the formal sector but is informally employed. A salaried accountant at a small family firm who has a contract and a provident fund works in the informal sector but holds a formal job.
Read with care
Because they measure different things, the two shares differ, and both are large: most Indian work is informal by either count. Check which one a figure uses before comparing it with another.
Work a person did on the side, for at least 30 days in the past year, alongside what they mostly did.
How it is worked out
The official survey first asks what a person spent most of the past year doing: working, looking for work, or neither. That is their principal status. If, besides that, they worked for 30 days or more, that is subsidiary work, and it is enough to count them as a worker.
For example
A woman who spent most of the year keeping house, but worked six weeks in the harvest, is counted as a worker by her subsidiary status.
Read with care
Thirty days of work and three hundred count the same in the headline figure. Much of the recent rise in women’s work has come as subsidiary work, so read a rise in the numbers together with how much and what kind of work lies behind it.
India's unemployment rate in 2025 was 3.1%, or 13.6%, depending on whom you countPer cent of the labour force, 2025. Usual status unless marked weekly.
Everyone 15 and over3.1%
Everyone 15 and over, past week5.3%
Aged 15–299.9%
Women aged 15–2911.3%
Aged 15–29, in cities and towns13.6%
051015%
SourcePeriodic Labour Force Survey, National Statistics Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation Usual status counts a person's main activity over the past year; the weekly rate asks about the seven days before the survey and is always higher. The survey was redesigned in 2025.
The numbers, and what they measure
2025
Everyone 15 and over
3.1
Everyone 15 and over, past week
5.3
Aged 15–29
9.9
Women aged 15–29
11.3
Aged 15–29, in cities and towns
13.6
What is measured
Unemployed persons as a share of the labour force (those working, or seeking or available for work).
Periodic Labour Force Survey: fetched 28 September 2026; Public record.
Unemployment in 2023-24 was 3.2% for women and men alike, and 20.1% for young women in citiesUnemployment rate, per cent of the labour force in each group, 2023-24 (July to June). Usual status.
Women 15–29, urban20.1%
Men 15–29, urban12.8%
Women 15–2911.0%
Men 15–299.8%
Women 15 and over, urban7.1%
Men 15 and over, urban4.4%
Women 15 and over3.2%
Men 15 and over3.2%
0102030%
SourcePeriodic Labour Force Survey, National Statistics Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation The rate counts only those working or looking for work. Most women are outside the labour force altogether, so a low rate for women does not mean most women who want work have it.
The numbers, and what they measure
2023–24
Women 15–29, urban
20.1
Men 15–29, urban
12.8
Women 15–29
11.0
Men 15–29
9.8
Women 15 and over, urban
7.1
Men 15 and over, urban
4.4
Women 15 and over
3.2
Men 15 and over
3.2
What is measured
Unemployed persons as a share of the labour force, by usual status (principal and subsidiary), July–June years.
Periodic Labour Force Survey: fetched 29 September 2026; Public record.
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.
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.
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.
Who is counted as working, and why the same year can show 3% unemployment or 13%.
4 entries · 2024–2026
20102026
202418 March
Reporting·Data For India
Employment in India
By Abhishek Waghmare
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.
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.
Reporting·Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) Annual Report
Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) – Annual Report [July, 2023 – June, 2024]
By National Sample Survey Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation
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.
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.
More from this sourceWhat it found and the figures checked
What it found
In the year to June 2024, 60.1% of people aged 15 and above were working or looking for work, up from 57.9% the year before; for women the rise was from 37.0% to 41.7%.p. 2
The unemployment rate held at 3.2%, but it moved in opposite directions for men and women: down for men, up for women.p. 2
Unemployment among women was far higher in cities than in villages: 7.1% for urban women in 2023-24 against 2.1% for rural women.p. 7
Women's participation in the labour force nearly doubled over six years, from 23.3% in 2017-18 to 41.7% in 2023-24, while men's rose only from 75.8% to 78.8%.p. 5
The survey did not cover all the sample it planned: 37 first-visit units and 80 revisit units were treated as casualties, and 21 of the first-visit losses were in Manipur.p. 3
The 4 figures in the note checked on pp. 2 and 4
.
Measured unemployment fell on every definition between 2017-18 and 2023-24Per cent of the labour force, July–June years
Everyone 15 and over
15 and over, past week · Graduates · Aged 15–29
15 and over, past week 4.9%
05101520%
Everyone 15 and over 3.2% Graduates 13.0% Aged 15–29 10.2%
The pandemic year
Graduates 13.0% Aged 15–29 10.2% 15 and over, past week 4.9% Everyone 15 and over 3.2%
2017–182020–212023–24
2017–182019–202021–222023–24
SourcePeriodic Labour Force Survey, National Statistics Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation The survey has since moved to calendar years, which cover different months and are not joined to this line.
The numbers, and what they measure
Year
Everyone 15 and over
15 and over, past week
Graduates
Aged 15–29
2017–18
6.0
8.7
17.2
17.8
2018–19
5.8
8.7
16.9
17.3
2019–20
4.8
8.8
17.2
15.0
2020–21
4.2
7.5
15.5
12.9
2021–22
4.1
6.6
14.9
12.4
2022–23
3.2
5.1
13.4
10.0
2023–24
3.2
4.9
13.0
10.2
Everyone 15 and over
Unemployed persons as a share of the labour force, by usual status: a person's main activity over the past year, counting a subsidiary activity of 30 days or more.
15 and over, past week
Unemployed persons as a share of the labour force, by current weekly status: whether a person worked, or sought work, for at least an hour in the seven days before the survey.
Graduates
Unemployed persons as a share of the labour force, among those whose highest level of education is a graduate degree (post-graduates are counted separately).
Aged 15–29
Unemployed persons as a share of the labour force (those working, or seeking or available for work).
Periodic Labour Force Survey: fetched 28 September 2026; Public record.
On the ILO's comparable estimate, 15.7% of India's young people in the labour force were unemployed in 2024, against 12.3% worldwideUnemployment rate, ages 15–24, per cent of the labour force of that age, 2024. ILO modelled estimates.
India15.7%
China15.0%
Indonesia13.1%
World12.3%
Bangladesh9.1%
Vietnam6.3%
01020%
SourceILOSTAT, ILO modelled estimates, International Labour Organization (CC BY 4.0) The ILO models every country on one definition so they can be set side by side; for India it starts from the PLFS, but its figure is not the survey's own rate for any one age group.
The numbers, and what they measure
2024
India
15.7
China
15.0
Indonesia
13.1
World
12.3
Bangladesh
9.1
Vietnam
6.3
What is measured
Unemployed people aged 15 to 24 as a share of the labour force of that age, ILO modelled estimates: built from national surveys where they exist and modelled where they do not, so countries can be compared. Years from the edition's own year on are projections and are left out.
ILOSTAT, ILO modelled estimates: fetched 29 September 2026; CC BY 4.0.
Reporting·Periodic Labour Force Survey Annual Report
Press Note on Periodic Labour Force Survey Annual Report, 2025 [January 2025 – December 2025]
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.
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.
More from this sourceWhat it found and the figures checked
What it found
Participation barely moved, and the gap between men and women in the labour force stayed wide: 79.1% of men and 40.0% of women were working or looking for work.p. 2
Unemployment held at 3.1% for both men and women, with men's rate easing a little from 2024 and women's unchanged.p. 3
Unemployment among people who had finished secondary school or more fell to 6.5% from 7.0% a year earlier.p. 2
Self-employment, still the largest way Indians earn, kept shrinking, from 58.2% of workers in 2023 to 56.2% in 2025, while regular wage or salaried jobs grew to 23.6%.p. 8
Farming's share of workers fell to 43.0% in 2025 from 44.8% in 2024, with small gains in manufacturing and other services.p. 8
The 6 figures in the note checked on pp. 2, 3, 4 and 12
.
Does India really have the biggest jobs challenge in the world?
By Bhuvanesh
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.
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.
Graduates who wait years for a salaried post, and what the waiting does to them.
7 entries · 2024–2026
20102026
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.
India Employment Report 2024: Youth employment, education and skills
By Alakh N. Sharma, Ravi Srivastava, Sher Verick, Balwant Singh Mehta, Tanuka Endow, Diksha Tayal and Shipra Nigam
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.
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.
More from this sourceWhat it found, 4 more passages and the figures checked
What it found
The report puts nearly 82 per cent of India's workforce in the informal sector and nearly 90 per cent in informal employment, and says the share of informal work rose after 2019.p. 26
Between 2000 and 2019, manufacturing value added grew at 7.5 per cent a year while manufacturing employment grew at 1.7 per cent a year.p. 28
Youth unemployment climbed from 5.7 per cent in 2000 to 17.5 per cent in 2019, then fell to 12.1 per cent in 2022 and 10 per cent in 2023.p. 29
The proportion of young women outside education, employment and training was nearly five times larger than among young men, and such women made up about 95 per cent of all young people in that position in 2022.p. 29
Regular salaried work lost security over two decades: the share of regular workers with no written contract rose by about 10 percentage points between 2005 and 2019, and the share with a contract of three years or more fell from 35.9 per cent to 21.5 per cent.p. 59
On the work young people took up during the pandemic
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the youth labour market indicators worsened only during peak periods. After the lockdowns, the youth labour market indicators recovered quite quickly. But this movement was accompanied by additions to the labour force and workforce, primarily in poor-quality work. The number of youths in self-employment expanded much more than in other categories of employment during the pandemic, which was mostly in household unpaid work, especially among rural women and considered the worst form of employment.
In 2022, the average monthly earnings or wages for youths in regular salaried work was the highest, at 14,583 rupees, followed by self-employment, at 10,100 rupees, and then casual work, at 8,315 rupees. For adults, the average monthly earnings or wages was much higher than those of youths, at 21,372 rupees for regular salaried work and 12,539 rupees for self-employment, while casual wage work was almost similar with youths, at 8,404 rupees.
On construction as the catch-all employer, and manufacturing's sluggish jobs
The construction sector stands out for consistently demonstrating high employment elasticity throughout the post-liberalization (after 2000) period. Yet, most jobs generated in this sector are characterized by low wages and their informality. Growth in manufacturing employment remains sluggish despite the robust gross value added growth.
The demand for low-skilled youths is increasing in various low-wage services sectors, including trade (including retail), hotels, restaurants, transportation services and gig and platform work. … One significant change brought about by digital platforms is the blurring of the traditional distinction between employees and self-employed individuals. This transformation has created new challenges regarding the well-being and working conditions of workers. The employment opportunities in the gig and platform economy primarily offer low-paying and non-standard work, which can be seen as an extension of informal work.
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.
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.
Unemployment among young women in cities fell from 27.2% to 20.1%, and stayed the highest of any groupUnemployment rate, ages 15–29, per cent of the labour force, usual status, July–June years
Urban women
Urban men · All women · All men
All men 9.8%
0102030%
Urban women 20.1% Urban men 12.8% All women 11.0%
Urban women 20.1% Urban men 12.8% All women 11.0% All men 9.8%
2017–182020–212023–24
2017–182019–202021–222023–24
SourcePeriodic Labour Force Survey, National Statistics Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation Ages 15 to 29. Rural and urban together for "all". The rate counts only those working or looking for work.
The numbers, and what they measure
Year
Urban women
Urban men
All women
All men
2017–18
27.2
18.7
17.9
17.8
2018–19
25.7
18.7
17.7
17.2
2019–20
24.9
18.2
14.6
15.1
2020–21
24.9
16.6
12.5
13.0
2021–22
21.6
15.8
11.8
12.6
2022–23
21.7
13.8
10.6
9.7
2023–24
20.1
12.8
11.0
9.8
What is measured
Unemployed persons as a share of the labour force, by usual status (principal and subsidiary), July–June years.
Periodic Labour Force Survey: fetched 29 September 2026; Public record.
37.1% of graduates aged 20 to 24 in the labour force were unemployed; by 40, almost none wereUnemployment rate among graduates, per cent of those in the labour force, by age, 2023-24 (July to June). Usual status.
20–2437.1%
25–2918.9%
30–348.4%
35–392.5%
40–440.9%
02040%
SourceData For India, “What do India’s graduates do?”, tabulated from the Periodic Labour Force Survey 2023-24, National Statistics Office (CC BY 4.0) Most unemployed graduates are young and newly out of college: the rate falls with every age group, which is why the survey's rate for graduates of all ages is far lower than for the youngest. Data For India's tabulation of the survey's unit-level data.
The numbers, and what they measure
2023–24
20–24
37.1
25–29
18.9
30–34
8.4
35–39
2.5
40–44
0.9
What is measured
Unemployed graduates as a share of graduates in the labour force, by usual status, July 2023 to June 2024; Data For India's own tabulation of the survey's unit-level data. Their table labels the youngest group "19-24"; its filter takes ages above 19, so the group is 20 to 24.
Data For India, “What do India’s graduates do?”: fetched 29 September 2026; CC BY 4.0.
State of Working India 2026: Youth in the labour market: Pathways from learning to earning
By Rosa Abraham, Tamoghna Halder, Amit Basole, Anand Shrivastava and Anand Kumar
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.
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.
More from this sourceWhat it found and the figures checked
What it found
Almost half the jobs added in the years after the pandemic were in agriculture, 40 million out of 83 million, with women accounting for 38 million.p. 20
Graduates have been coming out of colleges faster than jobs have appeared for them, and few of those jobs are salaried.p. 22
After 2017, farm employment among women grew fast, at 13 per cent a year for young women and nearly 20 per cent a year for older women.p. 83
On the authors' most ambitious projection, providing salaried work for young people in 2036 would need more than 100 million salaried jobs, against about 35 million in 2022.p. 212
Only about one in ten of the openly unemployed aged 20 to 29 spends any time of the day looking for work, according to the Time Use Survey.p. 193
The 3 figures in the note checked on pp. 20 and 22
.
Elusive jobs: how AI will demand even greater patience of India’s unemployed youth
By Vidya Mahambare and Asrar Alam
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.
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%.
Rosa & Tamoghana on India's Youth Employment Crisis
By Kashish Kapoor, Rosa Abraham and Tamoghna Halder
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.
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.
More from this sourceWhat was said
What was said
Rosa says the graduate unemployment rate has been read too narrowly. High unemployment also means more households can now afford to keep a young person waiting, which on its own is not a bad thing.at 18:17
Rosa says the ladder out of fallback work mostly does not exist in India. People who enter as gig or informal workers tend to stay there, and she links that stuckness to the protests in Noida.at 22:44
Tamoghna says factory floor work is not socially coded as a bad job in the West. In India it is the fallback, and the aspiration runs away from anything physical.at 24:12
Tamoghna describes unorganised-sector migration as flowing from poorer states to richer ones and from younger states to older ones, so that it partly balances India's age differences between states.at 25:52
Rosa argues that credit given to small and medium firms creates more jobs per rupee than the same credit given to a large corporate, which is why she would build up India's missing middle.at 34:13
Educated Unemployment: Why India’s Youth Are ‘Sitting’
By Nilanjana Sen and Avishek Jha
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.
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.
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.
More from this sourceWhat was said
What was said
Mahambare says only 47% of Indians aged 20 to 29 are employed, a figure she draws from the Time Use Survey 2024.
In Uttar Pradesh, she says the largest single contributor to the rise in women's employment is self-employment in animal rearing, largely dairy. The share of women employed in animal husbandry in the state rose from 2.3% to over 10%, more than fourfold.
She says the shift out of farming among the young is nearly done: only 13% of young adults work in agriculture, against 34% two decades earlier.
Mahambare recalls a report she worked on in 2012 which concluded that manufacturing would not reach 17% of GDP by 2021-22, well short of the 25% the national manufacturing policy wanted.
On housing, she says the state subsidises houses in people's native places while the jobs are in cities, and calls the result family separation.
Salaries that rose on paper and stood still after inflation, and the gap between kinds of work and between women and men.
2 entries · 2026
20102026
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.
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.
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.
CC BY 4.0
More from this source4 more passages
The commonest salaried job: a shop counter
The most common salaried occupation in India is working as salespersons in retail shops. Shop salespeople account for about 7% of salaried jobs in India, and they are those who run retail grocery stores, pharmaceutical and medicine shops, and clothing stores. Nine in ten salaried shop salespersons are men.
Who does India's paid housework
Half of these regular wage workers work as housemaids or servants in households, while the majority of the remaining work as cleaners and helpers in institutional settings such as hospitals, hotels and schools. Almost all of the household servants are women, and the majority of the institutional cleaning workers are male.
Education and the odds of a salaried job
Having a higher education significantly raises the odds of having a salaried job. Among workers who were educated up to the secondary level (Grade 12), 28% were salaried workers, as against 57% among the workers with a higher education.
Whose pay fell fastest
Among salaried workers employed in the most common occupations, high-skilled and high-earning workers appear to have experienced the sharpest declines in real incomes. … Software developers, college teachers, and protective services workers such as police personnel, on the other hand, saw their real incomes fall.
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.
On salaried work against casual work and self-employment
In his work for us on salaried employment, my colleague Abhishek Waghmare finds, as you would expect, that most of the conditions of employment around salaried work are marked improvements upon the other forms of working arrangements out there - casual work and self-employment. That’s why the big shift a country would like to see is an increase in salaried employment.
CC BY 4.0
More from this source1 more passage and the figures checked
On what an average salary hides
If this doesn’t square with the narrative around skyrocketing salaries, it’s worth remembering that each of these occupations employs several million people, and there is great heterogeneity in the skill levels, and as a result, in the salaries as well. As with most broad statistics in India, some groups have seen sharp growth, but the distributed reality is far more sobering.
After inflation, the average salary was ₹21,417 a month in 2022 and ₹21,455 in 2024Average monthly earnings from regular wage or salaried work, in rupees at current prices and at 2024 prices, calendar years
At 2024 prices
At current prices
010,00020,000₹30,000
Both ₹21,455₹22,699₹22,210
₹22,699₹22,210
New survey
Both ₹21,455 in 2024
2022202320242025
2022202320242025
SourcePeriodic Labour Force Survey, National Statistics Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation; Consumer Price Index, National Statistics Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation Deflated by the All India Consumer Price Index, General, rural and urban combined (base 2012). 2025 stands apart from the years before it. Data For India's reading of salaries since 2012 prompted this chart. The survey was redesigned from January 2025. MoSPI says the 2025 estimates may not be strictly comparable with the calendar-year figures for 2022 to 2024. PLFS Annual Report, 2025: press note, p. 14
The numbers, and what they measure
Year
At 2024 prices
At current prices
2022
21,417
19,316
2023
21,417
20,408
2024
21,455
21,455
2025
22,210
22,699
At 2024 prices
Average monthly earnings from regular wage or salaried work (current weekly status), deflated by the All India Consumer Price Index, General, rural and urban combined (base 2012 = 100, calendar-year averages), to 2024 prices: earnings × CPI(2024) ÷ CPI(year).
At current prices
Average wage or salary earnings in the calendar month before the survey, of people in regular wage or salaried work, by current weekly status, in rupees at current prices (not adjusted for inflation).
Periodic Labour Force Survey: fetched 29 September 2026; Public record. Consumer Price Index: fetched 29 September 2026; Public record.
Women in salaried work earned ₹17,126 a month in 2024, men ₹22,891Average monthly earnings from regular wage or salaried work, in rupees at current prices (not adjusted for inflation), calendar years
Women
Men
010,00020,000₹30,000
Women ₹17,126 Men ₹22,891₹18,353₹24,217
₹18,353₹24,217
New survey
Men ₹22,891 in 2024 Women ₹17,126 in 2024
2022202320242025
2022202320242025
SourcePeriodic Labour Force Survey, National Statistics Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation 2025 stands apart from the years before it. The survey was redesigned from January 2025. MoSPI says the 2025 estimates may not be strictly comparable with the calendar-year figures for 2022 to 2024. PLFS Annual Report, 2025: press note, p. 14
The numbers, and what they measure
Year
Women
Men
2022
15,406
20,517
2023
16,456
21,717
2024
17,126
22,891
2025
18,353
24,217
What is measured
Average wage or salary earnings in the calendar month before the survey, of people in regular wage or salaried work, by current weekly status, in rupees at current prices (not adjusted for inflation).
Periodic Labour Force Survey: fetched 29 September 2026; Public record.
A salaried worker earned ₹21,455 in a month in 2024; a self-employed one, ₹14,018Average earnings, in rupees at current prices, 2024. Salaries for the previous month; self-employment for the past 30 days.
Regular wage or salary₹21,455
Self-employment₹14,018
010,00020,000₹30,000
SourcePeriodic Labour Force Survey, National Statistics Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation Casual labour is paid by the day, so it is charted on its own. Self-employment earnings are gross, before a business's costs.
The numbers, and what they measure
2024
Regular wage or salary
21,455
Self-employment
14,018
Regular wage or salary
Average wage or salary earnings in the calendar month before the survey, of people in regular wage or salaried work, by current weekly status, in rupees at current prices (not adjusted for inflation).
Self-employment
Average gross earnings in the 30 days before the survey from self-employment (own-account work, employers and helpers in a household enterprise), by current weekly status, in rupees at current prices (not adjusted for inflation).
Periodic Labour Force Survey: fetched 29 September 2026; Public record.
Why more women are now counted as working, and what kind of work it is.
3 entries · 2025–2026
20102026
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.
Why has female labour force participation in India changed?
By Abhishek Waghmare
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.
On rural women who entered work for no wages
When female LFPR in rural India rose from the 1980s to the 2000s, the majority of newly added women in the workforce were unpaid helpers in household enterprises - typically women working on family farms or shops, but without being paid any wages. Unpaid helpers went from being a third of rural women workers in 1983 to nearly half in 2005.
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On housework as the reply women give when they are out of the workforce
When labour force participation rates for women rise, fewer women report that their main activity is housework, and when LFPR drops, more report housework as their main activity. This is particularly true for the current rise in female LFPR, where, alongside higher rates of labour force entry, enrolment in education has also risen, resulting in the lowest ever share of women who say that their main activity is housework.
On what the recent rise is made of
The recent increase in female LFPR, meanwhile, has seen an increase in the share of self-employment among women in both rural and urban areas, meaning that this is work for which the woman is earning her own wage.
On part-year work behind the rural rise
Most Indian workers are only principal workers, meaning that they work on one activity for most of the year, and this category has steadily grown for both men and women. However the recent rise in workers among both men and women in rural areas has primarily been in subsidiary work. Among rural women in particular, a large part of the recent increase has been in subsidiary work.
Are young Indians under or overworked? Both are true but AI may change work hours as we go along
By Vidya Mahambare and Poonam Munjal
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.
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.
Rural women's labour force participation fell to 24.6% by 2017-18, then climbed back to 47.6%Per cent of people 15 and over working or available for work, usual status, by survey round
Rural women
Urban women · Rural men · Urban men
0255075100%
Rural women 47.6% Urban women 28.0% Rural men 80.3% Urban men 75.6%
Rural men 80.3% Urban men 75.6% Rural women 47.6% Urban women 28.0%
1993–942023–24
1993–942004–052023–24
SourceData For India, “Why has female labour force participation in India changed?”, tabulated from the NSS employment surveys (1993-94 to 2011-12) and the Periodic Labour Force Survey (2017-18, 2023-24), National Statistics Office (CC BY 4.0) The rounds to 2011-12 are the NSS employment surveys; 2017-18 and 2023-24 are the Periodic Labour Force Survey, a different design, so the step between them is not a like-for-like change. Men's rates barely moved. Data For India's tabulation of the unit-level data.
The numbers, and what they measure
Year
Rural women
Urban women
Rural men
Urban men
1993–94
49.0
23.8
87.7
80.1
1999–00
45.4
20.9
85.4
78.8
2004–05
49.4
24.4
85.9
79.2
2011–12
35.8
20.5
81.3
76.4
2017–18
24.6
20.4
76.4
74.5
2023–24
47.6
28.0
80.3
75.6
What is measured
People aged 15 and over working or available for work, as a share of all people 15 and over, by usual status (principal and subsidiary), in the survey rounds of 1993-94, 1999-00, 2004-05 and 2011-12 (NSS) and 2017-18 and 2023-24 (PLFS); Data For India's tabulation of the unit-level data. The NSS surveys and the PLFS differ in design.
Data For India, “Why has female labour force participation in India changed?”: fetched 29 September 2026; CC BY 4.0.
More women are working, and a smaller share of them have salaried jobs: 15.9%, down from 21%Share of women workers in each kind of work, usual status
2017–18
2023–24
Own account or employer20.2%30.7%
Unpaid helper in a household enterprise31.7%36.7%
Regular wage or salary21.0%15.9%
Casual labour27.0%16.7%
02040%
SourcePeriodic Labour Force Survey, National Statistics Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation These are shares of a number that grew, so a smaller share of salaried work can still be more salaried jobs.
The numbers, and what they measure
2017–18
2023–24
Own account or employer
20.2
30.7
Unpaid helper in a household enterprise
31.7
36.7
Regular wage or salary
21.0
15.9
Casual labour
27.0
16.7
What is measured
Share of women workers, by usual status, in each kind of work. The four kinds add up to all women workers. MoSPI's API does not state the age group of this table.
Periodic Labour Force Survey: fetched 28 September 2026; Public record.
Of women graduates in their thirties who are out of the labour force, 90.8% say care or home keeps them out; of men, 8.2%Graduates out of the labour force who give care or home commitments as the reason, per cent of those out of it in each group, 2023-24 (July to June).
Women in their thirties90.8%
Women in their forties87.7%
Women in their fifties74.4%
Women in their twenties58.4%
Men in their fifties9.3%
Men in their thirties8.2%
Men in their forties3.6%
Men in their twenties0.3%
050100%
SourceData For India, “What do India’s graduates do?”, tabulated from the Periodic Labour Force Survey 2023-24, National Statistics Office (CC BY 4.0) Men of every age mostly give other reasons: study in their twenties, health or age later. Women in their twenties split between care and study. Data For India's tabulation of the survey's unit-level data.
The numbers, and what they measure
2023–24
Women in their thirties
90.8
Women in their forties
87.7
Women in their fifties
74.4
Women in their twenties
58.4
Men in their fifties
9.3
Men in their thirties
8.2
Men in their forties
3.6
Men in their twenties
0.3
What is measured
Graduates aged 20 and over who are out of the labour force (their usual principal activity is not work or seeking work, and they have no subsidiary work), by the reason they give, as a share of those in the same sex and age group, July 2023 to June 2024; Data For India's own tabulation.
Data For India, “What do India’s graduates do?”: fetched 29 September 2026; CC BY 4.0.
By Vidya Mahambare, Niharika Gowthaman, Poonam Munjal and Palash Baruah
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.
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.
The farm jobs that came back, and the young who left the land.
2 entries · 2026
20102026
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.
Employed women in Uttar Pradesh—what explains such a large increase within less than a decade?
By Vidya Mahambare and Vivek Jadhav
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.
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.
Indian farms have been losing their young workers—at a time they need the youth to improve farming
By Vidya Mahambare and Vivek Jadhav
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.
Rural women who work moved out of casual labour, down to 18.7%, and into self-employment, up to 31.3%Rural women 15 and over who work, by kind of work, per cent of all such workers, by survey round
Self-employed
Unpaid help in a family enterprise · Casual labour · Salaried
Self-employed 31.3%
0204060%
Unpaid help in a family enterprise 42.1% Casual labour 18.7% Salaried 7.8%
Unpaid help in a family enterprise 42.1% Self-employed 31.3% Casual labour 18.7% Salaried 7.8%
1993–942023–24
1993–942004–052023–24
SourceData For India, “Why has female labour force participation in India changed?”, tabulated from the NSS employment surveys (1993-94 to 2011-12) and the Periodic Labour Force Survey (2017-18, 2023-24), National Statistics Office (CC BY 4.0) The four shares add up to all rural women workers in each round. Unpaid help in a family farm or business stays the largest single kind of work. NSS surveys to 2011-12, the PLFS after. Data For India's tabulation.
The numbers, and what they measure
Year
Unpaid help in a family enterprise
Self-employed
Casual labour
Salaried
1993–94
41.9
16.4
38.9
2.7
1999–00
41.3
15.8
39.8
3.2
2004–05
47.3
16.3
32.7
3.8
2011–12
40.4
18.7
35.2
5.7
2017–18
38.6
19.1
31.8
10.5
2023–24
42.1
31.3
18.7
7.8
What is measured
Rural women aged 15 and over who work (usual status, principal and subsidiary), by kind of work, per cent of all such workers, in the NSS rounds from 1993-94 and the PLFS from 2017-18; Data For India's tabulation.
Data For India, “Why has female labour force participation in India changed?”: fetched 29 September 2026; CC BY 4.0.
Where the jobs might come from, and what a jobless decade does to a democracy.
2 entries · 2026
20102026
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.
By Debasish Roy Chowdhury and John Keane. Pan Macmillan.
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.
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.
Raghuram Rajan: India’s Jobs Crisis Needs a New Growth Model
By Rohit Inani
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.
Cite as: Life in India, “The jobs crisis,” Long View 3, revision 1.
The log
Everything added to or changed in this Long View, newest first. Nothing changes without a line here.
Opened with 20 entries and the first “Where things stand”. Revision 1
How this was made
Language models searched for and read the 20 sources between 29 and 30 September 2026, drafted the 20 entries
and “Where things stand”, and checked one another’s work. Code checked every quotation, figure and link against its
source. The editor chose every source and read everything before it was published.
The models, each step, and why
Models: DeepSeek Flash and Gemini 3.8 Flash.
Each step, and the models that did it
Drafted each entry from its source
DeepSeek Flash
Revised the entries the checks faulted
DeepSeek Flash
Judged how far each source bears on the subject
DeepSeek Flash
Checked each entry claim by claim against its source
Gemini 3.8 Flash
Wrote “Where things stand” from the entries
Gemini 3.8 Flash, DeepSeek Flash
Checked “Where things stand” against the entries
DeepSeek Flash, Gemini 3.8 Flash
Chose the links in “Where things stand”
DeepSeek Flash, Gemini 3.8 Flash
Every call to a model is logged.
What code checked
Every quotation was found word for word in the source it came from, and every figure in a note on the page it
cites. Every link in “Where things stand” goes to a source that sentence rests on, and every chart value was
found on its page. A second model checked each entry, never the model that wrote it.
What the editor did
The editor chose every source, read the 20 entries and “Where things stand”, and decided what
was published. How much of each source may be quoted is set by copyright rules in code, not by a model.
Why models
I make Life in India alone, alongside a full-time job. Reading every source behind a Long View, following each one as it changes and writing it up is a newsroom’s work, and large language models make it possible for one person to do it. They read and draft, code checks them against the sources, and I decide what goes in. The AI disclosure says why, and how. Read the AI disclosure
Know a source this Long View is missing?
Send the link, and a line on why it belongs here, to bhuvan@bebhuvan.com.
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