Statistics on unemployment in India had traditionally been collected, compiled and disseminated once every ten years by the Ministry of Labour and Employment (MLE), primarily from sample studies conducted by the National Sample Survey Office. Other than these 5-year sample studies, India had historically not collected monthly, quarterly or yearly nationwide employment and unemployment statistics on a routine basis. In 2016, the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, a non-governmental entity based in Mumbai, started sampling and publishing monthly unemployment in India statistics. Despite having one of the longest working hours, India has one of the lowest workforce productivity levels in the world.Dougherty, S., R. Herd and T. Chalaux (2009), "What is holding back productivity growth in India ?: Recent microevidence", OECD Journal: Economic Studies, vol. 2009/1, .Sapovadia, Vrajlal K., Low Productivity: India’s Bottleneck of Growth (May 21, 2019). Available at SSRN: or Bloom, Nicholas, Aprajit Mahajan, David McKenzie, and John Roberts. 2010. "Why Do Firms in Developing Countries Have Low Productivity?" American Economic Review, 100 (2): 619–23. Sivadasan, Jagadeesh. "Barriers to Competition and Productivity: Evidence from India" The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, vol. 9, no. 1, 2009. Goldar, B., Krishna, K.L., Aggarwal, S.C. et al. Productivity growth in India since the 1980s: the KLEMS approach. Ind. Econ. Rev. 52, 37–71 (2017). Economists often say that due to structural economic problems, India is experiencing jobless economic growth.Nicholas Vasilakos, Alkis Theonas Pitelis, Nick Horsewood & Christos Pitelis. (2023) Place-based public investment in regional infrastructure, the locational choice of firms and regional performance: the case of India. Regional Studies 57:6, pages 1055-1068. Kannan, K. P., and G. Raveendran. “Growth Sans Employment: A Quarter Century of Jobless Growth in India’s Organised Manufacturing.” Economic and Political Weekly 44, no. 10 (2009): 80–91. .Abubakar, J., Nurudeen, I. Economic Growth in India, Is It a Jobless Growth? An Empirical Examination Using Okun’s Law. Ind. J. Labour Econ. 62, 307–317 (2019). Roy Choudhury, P., Chatterjee, B. Analyzing “jobless growth” in post-liberalisation India: a decomposition approach. Ind. J. Labour Econ. 58, 577–608 (2015). Marwha, Amita, Jobless Growth in India's Service Sector: A Descriptive Study (February 21, 2016). Available at or Das, R. C. (2021). Sectoral Compositions of Output and Employment in India: Are We Moving Towards Jobless, Job-loss or Job-enabled Growth? Review of Market Integration, 13(2-3), 98-123.
Methodology and survey frequency
National Sample Survey The National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) has been the key governmental agency in India at the national and state levels to study employment, unemployment and unemployment rates through sample surveys. It does not report employment or unemployment results every quarter nor every year, but generally only once every 5 years. The last three officially released NSSO survey and report on employment and unemployment were completed in 2004–2005, in 2009–2010, and 2011–2012. The 2011-2012 survey was initiated by the Congress-led Manmohan Singh's government because it was felt that the higher unemployment numbers in the 2009-2010 report may have been affected by poor monsoons, and an early survey might yield more accurate and better data. There was no NSSO survey between 2012 and 2017, and a new survey was initiated in 2017–2018. This report has not been officially released by the BJP-led Narendra Modi's government, but the report has been leaked to the media.The jobs data mystery: Understanding India's big crisis in a fraught poll season, The Economic Times (10 April 2019)
According to ILO, the NSSO surveys are India's most comprehensive as they cover small villages in remote corners and islands of India. However, this survey uses unconventional and India-specific terminology. It estimates the activity status of a person by different approaches i.e. "usual status" unemployment and "current status" unemployment. These estimates yield various forms of unemployment numbers, according to an ILO report, and the totals vary based on, factors such as whether a person has, for pay or no pay, "worked at least for 30 days during the reference period of 365", "worked for at least 1 hour on any day during the 7 days preceding the date of survey", and an estimate for "person-hours worked in the reference week" according to its statistical methods". From its sample survey, it estimates a wide range of employment and unemployment statistics, along with the total population of the nation, gender distribution, and a host of other data. The NSSO methodology has been controversial, praised for its scope and effort, also criticized for its "absurd" results and inconsistencies.A Statistical Embarrassment, Surjit Bhalla, The Indian Express (April 13, 2019)
Labour bureau reports The Indian Labour Bureau, in addition to the NSSO surveys, has published indirect annual compilations of unemployment data by each state government's labour department reports, those derived from the Annual Survey of Industries (ASI), Occupational Wage Surveys, and Working Class Family Income and Expenditure Surveys and other regular and ad-hoc field surveys and studies on India published by third parties.
CMIE reports According to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy Private Limited (CMIE), India has never tracked and published monthly, quarterly or yearly employment and unemployment data for its people. This may have been a political convenience, states Mahesh Vyas, as "no measurements means there are no [political] arguments" about unemployment in India. CMIE, a non-government private entity, started to survey and publish monthly unemployment data for the first time in Indian history in 2016. Its data collection methodology and reports differ from those published by the NSSO.NYAY works against jobs, Mahesh Vyas, Business Standard (1 April 2019); for its methodology see Unemployment, CMIE, Mumbai (2019)
ILO reports The United Nations International Labour Organization has published its statistics for unemployment in India, along with other nations, based on the international standards it has adopted. In 2017, ILO updated its methodologies to make the labour force, employment and unemployment trends measurement more accurate and more consistent across countries. According to the ILO's 2018 World Employment of Social Outlook report, it adopted revisions and measures for all countries so as to "encompass the inclusion of additional data points (e.g. new or updated data for countries), removal of inconsistent data entries and revisions stemming from the application of the internationally agreed criteria in the computation of unemployment rates in countries where nation-specific, relaxed definitions of unemployment were previously reported. These changes account for 85 per cent of the downward revision to global unemployment figures". In 2017, the ILO adopted changes to its overall population data estimates as well, for each country including India. The ILO uses a complex and diverse set of population demographics, sample surveys and economic activity indicators to derive its estimates.World Employment Social Outlook 2018, ILO United Nations, Geneva, pages 5-7, 40-41, 56-58
Transition to periodic measurements In 2017, according to The Economic Times, the government announced that the "employment data collection in India will soon undergo a major revamp", after a high-level expert panel recommended an end to the five-year employment surveys by National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO). The panel led by Niti Aayog vice chairman Arvind Panagariya recommended that it be replaced with an annual or more frequent and reliable data collection and reports.NSSO survey faces an end, panel to opt for a more robust tool, The Economic Times (7 July 2017)Govt to conduct annual job survey, labour bureau study not realistic: Panagariya, The Hindustan Times (6 June 2017) According to this panel, the NSSO methodology and practices have yielded misleading and biased data that "do not include the self-employed and farm workers, and are marred by low or irregular frequency and long-time lags".
Statistics Unemployment and under-employment have been a long-standing problem in the Indian economy. According to a 2013 report by Pravin Sinha, the Indian labour force has been officially classified by the Indian government into three categories:Combating Youth Unemployment in India, Pravin Sinha (March 2013), Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Berlin, Germany Rural sector, which includes the farm labour Urban formal sector, which includes factory and service industry labour with periodic salaries and coverage per Indian labor laws Urban informal sector, which includes self-employment and casual wage workers
The rural and informal sectors of the Indian labour market accounted for 93% of the employment in 2011, and these jobs were not covered by the then existing Indian labour laws. According to the 2010 World Bank report, "low-paying, relatively unproductive, informal sector jobs continue to dominate the [Indian] labor market."World Bank (2010), India’s Employment Challenge – Creating Jobs, Helping Workers, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, , page 3 "The informal sector dominates India’s labour markets and will continue to do so in the medium term", states the World Bank, and even if the definition of the "formal sector is stretched to include all regular and salaried workers, some 335 million workers were employed in the informal sector in 2004–5".World Bank (2010), India’s Employment Challenge – Creating Jobs, Helping Workers, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, , page 8
1980s to 2015 According to the Indian government's official statistics between the 1980s and mid 2010s, relying in part on the NSSO data, the unemployment rate in India has been about 2.8%, which states the World Bank, is "a number that has shown little variation since 1983". In absolute terms, according to the various Indian governments between 1983 and 2005, the number of unemployed persons in India steadily increased from around 7.8 million in 1983 to 12.3 million in 2004–5. According to the World Bank, these official Indian government "low open unemployment rates can often be misleading" and the official data does not reflect the unemployment and under-employment reality of the Indian population.a World Bank (2010), India’s Employment Challenge – Creating Jobs, Helping Workers, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, , page 41-43
For decades, the Indian governments have used unusual terminology and definitions for who it considers as "unemployed". For example, "only those people are considered unemployed who spent more than six months of the year looking for or being available for work" and have not worked at all in the formal or the informal sector over that period. Alternate measures such as the current weekly or daily status unemployment definition are somewhat better. Using the current daily status definition, the unemployment rate in India had increased from "7.3% in 1999–2000 to 8.3% in 2004–5", states the World Bank report. However, these "better" official definitions and consequent NSSO data too have been a source of "unending controversy" since the 1950s, states Raj Krishna. In 1958–59, the Indian government began defining a current status employed as any person if "he was gainfully occupied [for wage or no wage] on at least one day", during the reference week [reference period] "regardless of the hours of work" he might have put in on that "gainfully occupied" day [or days]. A person was counted as "current status unemployed", since 1958 according to this official method, if he was not at all "gainfully occupied in that reference week and was available for work for at least one day in that reference period".