Wages for women rose at a faster pace than for men across all three categories of jobs in 2025, according to the statistics ministry’s Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) for the last calendar year, released on Friday.
According to the data, 2025 saw earnings of females rise 7.2%, 8.8%, and 5.4% for salaried jobs, self-employment, and casual labour, respectively, compared to 2024. Meanwhile, earnings for males posted a growth of 5.8% and 8% for salaried jobs and self-employment, respectively, but fell by 0.2% for casual labour.
To be sure, women continue to earn much less than men. In salaried jobs, females in 2025 earned only 76% of what males earn, little changed from 2022. Meanwhile, in casual labour, income inequality saw slight improvement in 2025, with females earning 69% of what males did, up from 66% in 2024.
Women, however, fare the worst when it comes to self-employment, earning only 36% of what males earn, the PLFS data showed
In another positive development, the PLFS – the Indian government’s flagship jobs survey – showed that the proportion of women in salaried jobs rose to 18.2% in 2025 from 16.6% in 2024, with the fraction in self-employment declining to 64.2% from 66.5%. Casual labour saw an increase to 17.6% from 16.9%. The trend was somewhat similar for males.
At an all-India level, the proportion of employed with salaried jobs rose to 23.6% from 22.4% in 2024.
Salaried jobs are indicative of higher-quality employment as they provide social security cover, among other benefits.
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The PLFS data for 2025 comes days after the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) made public the results of its Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises (ASUSE), which showed that pay in India’s informal sector rose by just 3.9% in 2025, less than half the 13% increase seen in 2023-24 (October-September). At the same time, the informal sector saw a sharp reduction in the number of establishments it added, leading to far fewer workers being hired. As per the ASUSE survey, the number of establishments increased by 58.5 lakh, down from an increase of 83.5 lakh in 2023-24, to 7.92 crore. As a result, fewer jobs were created: 74.5 lakh in 2025 compared to 1.1 crore in the 12 months ended September 2024.
In terms of the headline figures, the annual PLFS data showed that India’s rural unemployment rate declined to 2.4% in 2025 from 2.5% in 2024, while urban joblessness fell to 4.8% from 5%. However, the rural Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR) – the fraction of the population seeking work – inched down slightly to 62.8% in 2025, suggesting a smaller proportion of rural Indians were looking for jobs than the previous year.
Meanwhile, the urban LFPR held steady at 52.2%.
Unemployment among the youth – or persons in the 15-29 years age bracket – declined to 9.9% in 2025 from 10.3% the previous year, although female youth unemployment edged up to 11.3% from 11.1%.
“Using the projected population figures of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the absolute number of workers aged 15 years and above has been estimated. On average, 61.6 crore persons (aged 15 years and above) were employed, in usual status (ps+ss), in the country during January–December 2025, of which 41.6 crore were male and 20.0 crore were female,” the statistics ministry said in a statement.
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Usual status (ps+ss) refers to the method used to measure labour market activity, with ‘ps’ standing for Principal Status and ‘ss’ for Subsidiary Status. The estimate of the labour force in the usual status includes people who either worked or were available for work for a relatively long part of the 365 days preceding the date of survey as well as those persons among the remaining population who had worked at least for 30 days during the reference period of 365 days preceding the date of survey.
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