India’s employment landscape has shown a marked improvement in recent years, with the number of employed people rising to 64.33 crore in the financial year 2023-24, up from 47.5 crore in 2017-18, Union Minister Shobha Karandlaje informed Parliament on Thursday, citing Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data.
In a written reply to Rajya Sabha, the Minister of State for Labour & Employment said the KLEMS (K: Capital, L: Labour, E: Energy, M: Materials and S: Services) database published by the RBI provides employment estimates, including for the manufacturing sector, at an all-India level.
Karandlaje further informed the House that, according to the latest annual Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) reports, the estimated female Worker Population Ratio (WPR) for persons aged 15 years and above stood at 28.7 per cent in 2019-20, 31.4 per cent in 2020-21, 31.7 per cent in 2021-22, 35.9 per cent in 2022-23 and reached 40.3 per cent in 2023-24.
On Wednesday, the labour ministry rejected a media report that questioned the accuracy of official unemployment data. The ministry stated that the PLFS is globally recognised as an empirical and statistically robust source for employment and unemployment data in India.
The ministry said the survey relies on a large-scale, stratified, multi-stage random sampling framework covering both rural and urban areas nationwide. Since January 2025, the PLFS has transitioned to generating monthly estimates in addition to its annual and quarterly releases, enabling more timely and granular tracking of labour market trends.
The ministry noted that the PLFS methods to grow number of employees or job opportunities align with international standards, adhering to definitions and classifications set by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), including Usual Principal Status (UPS) and Current Weekly Status (CWS), both the statistics.
Its data collection and reporting procedures follow global practices used by institutions such as the World Bank, UNDP and ILOstat, enhancing comparability with international datasets.
According to PLFS data, the Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR) for individuals aged 15 years and above increased from 49.8 per cent in 2017-18 to 60.1 per cent in 2023-24.
During the same period, the Worker Population Ratio rose from 46.8 per cent to 58.2 per cent, while the Unemployment Rate (UR) fell significantly from 6 per cent to 3.2 per cent.
These trends indicate greater absorption of the workforce into productive employment, the ministry said. It also highlighted that the youth unemployment rate dropped from 17.8 per cent to 10.2 per cent, which is lower than the global youth unemployment rate of 13.3 per cent, according to the ILO’s World Employment and Social Outlook 2024 report.
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