NCERT
Every NCERT book that matters for UPSC — open a book, then a chapter. Learn each chapter's concepts, then how UPSC tests them — with diagrams, flowcharts and the past questions to attempt.
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← Indian Economic Development — all chaptersEmployment: Growth, Informalisation and Other Issues
Start here: why this chapter matters
In simple wordsAsk ten adults in an Indian village what they do. Six may farm their own land or run a tiny shop, two may work for daily wages, two may have a salaried job. Most will have no pension, no paid leave and no written contract. This chapter turns that village survey into national numbers — and asks why the economy grows fast but good jobs grow slowly.
Work gives income, self-worth and a place in society; every worker adds to national income. Studying workers shows the quality of employment, helps plan human resources, shows each sector's contribution, and exposes problems such as exploitation and child labour. NCERT opens with Gandhi's warning against the ‘craze’ for labour-saving machinery that throws thousands out of work — the theme of jobless growth that runs through the chapter.
- Builds on Chapter 2 (occupational structure barely changed, 1950–90), Chapter 3 (the ‘jobless growth’ criticism of the reforms), Chapter 4 (educated unemployment) and Chapter 5 (rural non-farm diversification).
- Overlaps with Geography: India: People and Economy Chapter 1 (Population — occupational structure, demographic dividend) and Fundamentals of Human Geography Chapters 5–6 (secondary, tertiary and quaternary activities, outsourcing).
- Links to Class 10 Economics (Sectors of the Indian Economy — organised and unorganised, disguised unemployment) and Class 12 Macroeconomics (GDP, GNP).
- UPSC: GS3 ‘inclusive growth and issues arising from it’, ‘employment’; Mains has asked about jobless growth (2015), informalisation (2016), measuring unemployment (2023) and the labour codes (2024); Prelims about disguised unemployment and casual workers' rights.
| Word | What it means here |
|---|---|
| Economic activity | Any activity that contributes to gross national product |
| GNP | GDP plus net earnings from transactions with the rest of the world (NCERT's simplified definition) |
| Worker | Anyone engaged in an economic activity, in whatever capacity, including helpers and the self-employed |
| Workforce | The total number of workers |
| Worker-population ratio | Workers ÷ population × 100 |
| Self-employed | Owns and operates an enterprise |
| Regular salaried employee | Engaged by someone and paid wages regularly |
| Casual wage labourer | Engaged casually and paid for the work done |
| Formal (organised) sector | Public sector establishments and private ones with 10 or more hired workers |
| Informal (unorganised) sector | All other enterprises and their workers |
| Jobless growth | Output rising without a matching rise in employment |
| Casualisation | A shift from self-employment and regular jobs towards casual wage work |
| Disguised unemployment | More people on a task than needed, so some add nothing to output |
Reading the chapter opening (page 92), Gandhi's quotation and Fig. 6.1 (page 93)
- Four aims: concepts (economic activity, worker, workforce, unemployment); men's and women's participation across sectors; nature and extent of unemployment; and government initiatives for employment.
- Gandhi: he objects not to machinery but to the ‘craze’ for labour-saving machinery that leaves thousands without work. The point: technology choices decide how many jobs growth creates.
- Fig. 6.1 — Multinational companies sell footballs made in the houses of Jalandhar, Punjab: three women sitting outdoors, one stitching a football panel, finished balls beside them. The point: global supply chains reach into homes — work is home-based, piece-rated and informal, even when the buyer is a multinational.
At a glance — the six ideas to carry away
- Worker = anyone in an economic activity adding to GNP — paid, self-employed or helping; temporarily absent still counts.
- Worker-population ratio 2023–24: 43.7 overall; men 56.4, women 30.7, urban women only 20.7.
- Status: 58% self-employed, 22% regular salaried, 20% casual (2023–24).
- Sector: primary 74.3 → 46.1% (1972–2024); secondary 10.9 → 24.1; services 14.8 → 29.8.
- Jobless growth: GDP grows far faster than employment (often under 2% a year).
- Informal sector ≈ 89% of workers (2019–20); formal = public sector + private units with 10+ hired workers.
1. Workers and employment
In simple wordsIf you sell vegetables from a cart, you are a worker even though nobody pays you a salary. If you help your father in his shop for a few hours every day, you are a worker too. But a woman who cooks and fetches water for the family all day is usually not counted — and that is one of the most debated choices in economic statistics.
All the final goods and services produced in a year make up GDP; adding net earnings from trade with other countries gives GNP. Activities that contribute to GNP are economic activities, and everyone engaged in them is a worker — including those temporarily absent through illness, injury, bad weather, festivals or social functions, those who help the main workers, and the self-employed.
- India's workforce in 2022–23: about 545 million; rural workers about two-thirds.
- About 77% of workers are men. Women are about one-fourth of the rural workforce and one-fifth of the urban workforce.
- Women's cooking, fetching water and fuelwood and unpaid farm help are often not counted, so economists argue they too should be called workers.
Beyond NCERT — the data sourceToday's employment figures come mainly from the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) of the National Statistical Office, launched in 2017 (first annual report for 2017–18). NCERT's 2023–24 tables use its annual results. Note that NCERT's GNP definition is simplified: strictly, GNP adds net factor income from abroad, not the trade balance.
2. Participation: the worker-population ratio
In simple wordsLine up 100 Indians of all ages. About 44 of them are working; the rest are children, students, the elderly, people looking for work, and many women whose work at home isn't counted. That ‘44 out of 100’ is the worker-population ratio.
The worker-population ratio = number of workers ÷ population × 100. A higher ratio means more of the population is engaged in production. Rural ratios are higher because rural people have limited resources, many leave school early to join the workforce, and few can afford to stay at home; urban people study longer and search for jobs that match their skills.
Reading Table 6.1 — Worker-Population Ratio in India, 2023–24 (page 95)
- Men: 56.4 total, 56.3 rural, 56.4 urban — almost the same everywhere.
- Women: 30.7 total, 34.8 rural, 20.7 urban — the big gap is among women.
- All persons: 43.7 total, 45.6 rural, 38.9 urban.
- What the table shows: the rural–urban difference in the overall ratio comes almost entirely from women.
NCERT's text vs its own tableThe text says that out of 100 persons ‘about 41 (by rounding off 41.1)’ are workers, ‘about 38’ in urban and ‘about 42’ in rural areas. Table 6.1 for 2023–24 gives 43.7, 38.9 and 45.6. The text figures belong to an earlier survey round; use the table for 2023–24 and quote the year with any figure.
Why do fewer women work? Where men earn high incomes, families often discourage women from taking jobs; and the narrow definition of work leaves out much of women's household and family-farm work, so women workers are underestimated.
Reading Fig. 6.2 — Brick-making: a form of casual work (page 96)A photograph of workers at a brick kiln, with stacked bricks and moulds. The point: brick-making is classic casual work — seasonal, paid by piece or day, no contract, often employing whole families.
3. Self-employed, regular and casual workers
In simple wordsOn a building site you'll find three kinds of people: the shopkeeper who sells the cement (self-employed), the engineer on a monthly salary (regular), and the labourers hired by the day (casual). Same industry, very different security.
A worker's status shows one side of the quality of employment — attachment to the job and authority over the enterprise. Self-employed (own and run an enterprise): about 58% of the workforce. Casual wage labourers: about 20%. Regular salaried employees: about 22%.
Reading Charts 6.1 and 6.2 — Distribution of Employment by Gender and by Region (page 97)
- Chart 6.1: men — self-employed 54%, regular 21%, casual 25%; women — self-employed 67%, regular 16%, casual 17%.
- Chart 6.2: rural — self-employed 65%, regular 13%, casual 22%; urban — self-employed 40%, regular 48%, casual 12%.
- What they show: self-employment is the main source for both sexes and in villages; in towns regular jobs lead because urban enterprises need workers regularly.
- Check: weighting men (≈ 77% of workers) and women gives roughly 57% self-employed, 20% regular, 23% casual — close to Table 6.3's 2017–18 column, not its 2023–24 one (58.4 / 21.7 / 19.9). The gender pies may come from an earlier survey round.
- The text says casual work is the ‘second major source for women’; in the pie it is 17% against 16% regular — only just.
Exam traps
- A typist paid monthly but engaged on a daily-wage basis is casual; a rice-mill worker paid daily but employed regularly is regular — status depends on the regularity of engagement, not the payment interval alone (Work These Out, page 98).
- Self-employed do not necessarily earn more than regular employees — many are tiny, low-income enterprises.
- Casual wage labourers are the most vulnerable category.
4. Employment by sector
In simple wordsAs countries develop, people move from fields to factories and then to offices and shops. India's workers have been moving off the farm, but slowly — and many skipped the factory stage and went straight into services or construction.
Activities fall into eight industrial divisions grouped into three sectors: primary (agriculture; mining and quarrying), secondary (manufacturing; electricity, gas and water; construction) and tertiary/services (trade; transport and storage; services). Secondary and tertiary together are the non-farm sector.
Reading Table 6.2 — Distribution of Workforce by Industry, 2023–24 (page 99)
- Total: primary 46.1, secondary 24.1, services 29.8.
- Rural: 59.8 / 21.4 / 18.8. Urban: 6.7 / 32.4 / 60.9.
- Male: 36.3 / 28.8 / 34.9. Female: 64.4 / 15.6 / 20.0.
- What the table shows: women are concentrated in farming; men have options in industry and services; towns are service economies. All five columns add to 100.
Reading Fig. 6.3 — Garment workers: upcoming factory employment for women (page 99)Rows of women at sewing machines in a garment factory. The point: labour-intensive manufacturing such as garments is one of the few routes by which women move from the farm to factory work.
5. Growth and the changing structure of employment
In simple wordsA bakery buys a machine that doubles its bread output. It sells more and earns more — but it doesn't hire anyone new. Do that across a whole economy and you get ‘jobless growth’: GDP rising fast while jobs barely grow.
From 1951 to 2023, GDP grew faster than employment, and with fluctuations. Employment growth stayed at 2% or less most of the time. From the late 1990s employment growth fell back towards early-planning levels while GDP growth rose: a widening gap that scholars call jobless growth.
Reading Chart 6.3 — Growth of Employment and GDP, 1951–2023 (page 101)
- GDP growth: 3.6, 4.2, 2.8, 3.3, 4.8, 5.7, 5.8, 3.4, 6.1, 6.1, 8.7 (2005–10), 7.8, 7.0 (2022–23).
- Employment growth: 0.39, 0.85, 2.03, 1.99, 1.84, 1.73, 1.89, 1.5, 0.98, 2.28, 0.28 (2005–10), 1.12, 3.2 (2022–23).
- The sharpest jobless-growth episode: 2005–10, GDP 8.7% vs employment 0.28%.
- Slips: the text says employment growth exceeded 2% at only two points (1999–2005 and 2022–23), but the chart also shows 2.03 in 1961–66. The periods are uneven and overlap (1997–2000 and 1999–2005), and the chart's footnote asterisk is not attached to any period.
⤵ How jobless growth happens
Output growsGDP rises, led by services and capital-intensive industry
Labour-saving technologymore output per worker — Gandhi's ‘craze for machinery’
Few new jobs in high-growth sectorsfinance, IT and capital-intensive manufacturing have low employment elasticity
Workers stay on farmsprimary share still 46%; disguised unemployment
Or take casual, informal workconstruction, vending, piece-rate home work
ResultGDP–employment gap widens: jobless growth
Structure: the primary sector's share of workers fell from about 74% (1972–73) to about 46% (2023–24); secondary rose from 11 to 24% and services from 15 to 30%. By status, people moved from self-employment and regular jobs towards casual wage work — scholars call this casualisation — though self-employment remains the largest. NCERT also notes a moderate rise in regular salaried jobs in 2017–24 and asks why secondary employment stagnated in 2011–24.
Reading Table 6.3 — Trends in Employment Pattern, 1972–2024 (page 102)
- Sector: primary 74.3 → 68.6 → 64 → 48.9 → 46.1 → 46.1; secondary 10.9 → 11.5 → 16 → 24.3 → 24.9 → 24.1; services 14.8 → 16.9 → 20 → 26.8 → 29.0 → 29.8 (1972–73, 1983, 1993–94, 2011–12, 2017–18, 2023–24).
- Status: self-employed 61.4 → 57.3 → 54.6 → 52.0 → 55.6 → 58.4; regular 15.4 → 13.8 → 13.6 → 18.0 → 21.1 → 21.7; casual 23.2 → 28.9 → 31.8 → 30.0 → 23.3 → 19.9.
- Arithmetic slip: the 1983 sector column adds to only 97.0 (68.6 + 11.5 + 16.9); every other column adds to 100. One of the 1983 values is misprinted.
- Text vs table: NCERT says that over 1972–2024 people moved towards casual work. The table shows casualisation from 1972–73 to 1993–94 (23.2 → 31.8), then a reversal: casual work in 2023–24 (19.9) is below its 1972–73 level, and regular jobs rose to 21.7. Read ‘casualisation’ as a feature of the 1980s–1990s, and quote the period.
Beyond NCERTUPSC 2013: disguised unemployment means the marginal productivity of labour is zero. UPSC 1993: financial services have very low employment elasticity (output grows with few extra jobs). UPSC 1982: capital-intensive industries increase unemployment. UPSC 2020 on the post-1991 rural economy: rural non-farm growth increased and rural employment growth decreased (key: 3 and 4).
6. Informalisation of the workforce
In simple wordsA clerk in a government office has a pension, paid leave and a union. A worker in a ten-person private firm doing the same job may have none of these. Nine out of ten Indian workers are in the second kind of world — the informal sector.
Planning hoped industrialisation would pull surplus workers off farms into better-paid, protected jobs. Yet the quality of employment has worsened for many: long-serving workers without maternity benefit, provident fund, gratuity or pension; lower pay in the private sector than the public sector for the same work. Only a small group has regular income, legal protection and trade unions.
- Formal sector: all public sector establishments + private establishments with 10 or more hired workers.
- Informal sector: everyone else — farmers, agricultural labourers, small enterprises and their workers, self-employed with no hired workers, and non-farm casual workers who work for several employers (construction, headload workers).
- Formal workers have social security and earn more; informal workers have no regular income, no protection, can be dismissed without compensation, use outdated technology, keep no accounts, often live in slums.
Reading Chart 6.4 — Workers in Formal and Informal Sector, 2011–2020 (page 104)
- 2011–12: formal 30 million, informal 443 million (total 473). 2019–20: formal 59, informal 476 (total 535).
- Formal share: about 6% (2011–12) → 11% (2019–20); informal 89%.
- What it shows: formal jobs doubled, yet nine in ten workers remain informal. Note the text gives 545 million workers for 2022–23 — a different year from the chart.
Reading Box 6.1 — Formal Sector Employment (page 103)Formal-sector data are collected by the Union Ministry of Labour through employment exchanges. In 2012, of about 30 million formal workers, about 18 million were in the public sector — the government is the major formal employer — and women were only about one-sixth of formal workers. Economists say the reforms of the early 1990s reduced formal employment. The point: shrinking the public sector shrinks the main source of protected jobs.
Reading Box 6.2 — Informalisation in Ahmedabad (page 105), with its photograph
- Ahmedabad's wealth came from 60+ textile mills employing 1,50,000 workers who had secure jobs, a living wage, social security and a strong union.
- From the early 1980s mills closed across India — quickly in Mumbai, over about 10 years in Ahmedabad. About 80,000 permanent and 50,000 non-permanent workers lost jobs and were pushed into the informal sector.
- Effects: recession, communal riots, a whole class thrown from the middle class into poverty, alcoholism, suicides, children withdrawn from school and sent to work.
- The photograph: an unemployed mill worker sits on a cot peeling garlic while his wife, in the foreground, has a new job rolling beedis — ‘change in the balance of power in a house’.
- The point: informalisation is not just a statistic; it reverses household roles and pushes children into labour.
⤵ Informalisation, step by step (Box 6.2)
Formal jobssecure job, living wage, social security, union
Closures and restructuringmills shut; firms cut permanent staff
Pushed into the informal sectorcasual, piece-rate, home-based work; no protection
Household shocklower income, debt, alcoholism, suicides; children sent to work — loss of human capital (Chapter 4)
Reading Fig. 6.4 — Road side vending (page 104) and Fig. 6.5 — Unemployed mill workers waiting for casual jobs (page 106)
- Fig. 6.4: a crowded street market with women and men sitting on the ground selling produce from baskets and cloths — informal self-employment, open to anyone, with no security.
- Fig. 6.5: men gathered at a spot waiting to be picked for a day's work — the ‘labour chowk’ where former formal workers become casual labourers.
Since the late 1970s developing countries, including India, have paid more attention to informal enterprises because formal employment was not growing; with the ILO's efforts, India began modernising informal enterprises and extending social security to informal workers.
Beyond NCERT — labour law and social security
- The Unorganised Workers' Social Security Act, 2008 provided for welfare schemes for informal workers; the e-Shram portal (launched August 2021) registers unorganised workers.
- Parliament consolidated 29 central labour laws into four Labour Codes — the Code on Wages, 2019; the Industrial Relations Code, 2020; the Code on Social Security, 2020 (which recognises gig and platform workers); and the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020. The Union government brought them into force in November 2025. Supporters stress simpler compliance and wider social security; critics worry about easier lay-offs and weaker union rights (UPSC Mains 2024).
- Atal Pension Yojana (2015) is a guaranteed-pension scheme aimed mainly at unorganised workers (UPSC 2016). Fixed-term employment rules (2018) made it easier to end temporary contracts (UPSC 2019).
Exam traps
- An establishment with four hired workers is informal; ten or more makes a private unit formal (exercise Q6). Public sector establishments are formal whatever their size.
- A temporary computer operator in a government office works in a formal-sector establishment, though his own job is insecure — NCERT's definition classifies by establishment.
- UPSC 2021: casual workers are not all entitled to provident fund (key: statements 2 and 3 correct).
7. Unemployment
In simple wordsSome people stand at a crossing every morning hoping to be hired for the day — that's open unemployment. Some sit at home on a farm where there's nothing extra to do, though they look busy — that's disguised. Some have work only when crops are sown and harvested — that's seasonal. In a poor country, few can afford to stay fully unemployed for long, so they take any work, however bad.
The National Statistical Office (formerly the National Sample Survey Organisation) defines unemployment as a situation in which people who are not working for lack of work either seek work (through exchanges, intermediaries, friends, relatives or applications) or say they are willing and available for work at prevailing conditions. Economists define an unemployed person as one who cannot get work for even one hour in half a day. Data sources: Census reports, NSO employment–unemployment reports and annual PLFS reports, and the Directorate General of Employment and Training's employment-exchange registrations — each gives different estimates.
Reading Fig. 6.6 — Sugar cane cutters (page 107) and Fig. 6.7 — Dam construction (page 108)
- Fig. 6.6: a group cutting and bundling sugarcane in a field — farm work where more people than necessary often share the task (disguised unemployment) and work exists only at harvest (seasonal).
- Fig. 6.7: a large dam under construction with many workers — direct employment generation by government through public works.
Beyond NCERT
- Other types UPSC asks about: frictional (between jobs — UPSC 1992), structural (skills or capital do not match available jobs — Mains 2023 says most Indian unemployment is structural), cyclical (recession).
- Disguised unemployment arises from heavy population pressure on land with half-hearted agrarian reform (UPSC 1992 key).
- NCERT lists ‘three sources’ of data but names four (Census, NSO reports, PLFS reports, employment exchanges) — the NSO and PLFS reports can be read as one source.
8. Government and employment generation
In simple wordsWhen a government steel plant hires workers, that's a direct job. When a private bicycle maker buys more of that steel and hires more workers, that's an indirect job the government helped create. Public works like roads and dams do both.
The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 promises 100 days of guaranteed wage employment to every rural household that volunteers for unskilled manual work. Since Independence, governments have created jobs directly (departments, public industries, hotels, transport) and indirectly (raising output in public enterprises raises output and jobs in private firms that buy from them).
⤵ Direct and indirect employment (NCERT's steel example)
Government steel company raises outputpublic investment
Directmore workers hired in the steel company itself
Indirectprivate firms buying steel raise output and hire more
Plus employment programmeswage employment and assets: health, education, drinking water, nutrition, housing, sanitation, rural roads, wasteland development
Cross-chapter noteThis chapter still names the MGNREGA of 2005, while Chapter 5 of the same reprint says MNREGA is ‘now known as’ the Viksit Bharat – Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin). Know both names; this page adds no details of the new scheme beyond NCERT. Beyond NCERT: Maharashtra's Employment Guarantee Scheme (1970s) was the first of its kind (UPSC 1993).
Conclusion (NCERT): the structure of the workforce has changed; new jobs are mostly in services; technology lets small firms and individual specialists compete alongside multinationals; outsourcing hands small piecemeal jobs to tiny enterprises or individuals, even abroad, so for many the home becomes the workplace. This has not favoured workers: employment has become more informal with limited social security. Rapid GDP growth without matching employment has pushed governments to create jobs, especially in rural areas.
Reading the Recap box (page 110)Eleven points. Note that two are now dated against the chapter's own tables: ‘about two-fifth of the population is engaged in economic activities’ (Table 6.1: 43.7%), and ‘about three-fifth of India's workforce depends on agriculture’ (Table 6.2: 46.1% in 2023–24). The text's ‘more than half of the workforce depends on farming’ (section 6.7) is dated in the same way.
NCERT's ‘Work These Out’ — short answers
Why do some women with degrees and free time not work? Should unpaid housework count towards GNP? (page 94)
Reasons: family disapproval, safety and travel, care duties, lack of suitable local jobs, marriage and relocation, social status. Ways: flexible and local jobs, safe transport, childcare, skill-matching. On housework: argue both — it is productive (it would cost money to buy), and leaving it out undercounts women's work; but valuing it is hard, which is why national accounts exclude it (time-use surveys now measure it — Beyond NCERT).
Why must any study of employment start with worker-population ratios? (page 96)
It shows what share of the population is producing goods and services — the base for comparing regions, sexes and years before looking at status, sector or quality of work.
Why don't some communities send women to work even when men earn little? (page 96)
Social norms of seclusion and family honour, caste and status concerns, fear for safety, and the burden of unpaid care work.
Classify as (a) self-employed (b) regular salaried (c) casual: owner of a saloon; rice-mill worker paid daily but employed regularly; SBI cashier; typist in a state government office on daily wage but paid monthly; handloom weaver; loading worker in a wholesale vegetable shop; owner of a cold drinks shop; nurse in a private hospital on monthly salary for 5 years. (page 98)
1 (a) · 2 (b) · 3 (b) · 4 (c) · 5 (a) · 6 (c) · 7 (a) · 8 (b).
Why are casual wage labourers the most vulnerable? Who and where are they? (page 98)
No assured work, irregular income, no social security or contract; found in agriculture, construction, brick kilns, loading, domestic work — mostly rural landless and urban migrants.
Do the self-employed earn more than casual or regular workers? Other indicators of quality of employment? (page 98)
Not necessarily — many self-employed run tiny, low-income units. Other indicators: regularity, written contract, paid leave, social security (PF, pension, health), hours, safety, union rights, earnings.
Make a table of newspaper job advertisements by public/private, post, number, sector and qualification. (page 100)
Typical finding: most advertised jobs are in services (IT, banking, sales) and demand degrees; few in agriculture — the formal market is small and skill-biased.
Why is 2% employment growth hard for India? What happens with jobless growth? How can it happen? (page 102)
A huge, fast-growing labour force needs millions of new jobs each year; much growth is in capital- and skill-intensive sectors. Without jobs, income gains go to a few, inequality and underemployment rise, and demand weakens. It happens through labour-saving technology and services-led growth (see the jobless-growth flow).
If casualisation raises earnings, should it be welcomed? A marginal farmer becoming a labourer; a pharma worker becoming a daily wager. (page 102)
Earnings are only one part of well-being: loss of security, assets, status and social protection can outweigh higher daily pay. The farmer loses his land-based independence; the pharma worker loses PF, pension and regularity. Many would not be happier.
How do you explain the stagnation of the secondary sector and rising self-employment (2011–24), and the moderate rise in regular jobs (2017–24)? (page 102)
Possible reasons: slow manufacturing job growth; shocks (demonetisation 2016, GST transition, Covid-19) that pushed people into own-account work; formalisation through registration and payroll schemes raising regular jobs. Treat these as hypotheses to discuss, not settled facts.
Tick the informal-sector workers: hotel worker (7 hired + 3 family); private school teacher (25 teachers); police constable; government nurse; cycle-rickshaw puller; textile shop owner with 9 workers; bus-company driver (20+ workers); civil engineer in a firm with 10 workers; temporary computer operator in a state government office; clerk in the electricity office. (page 106)
Informal: hotel worker (7 hired workers — family workers aren't hired), cycle-rickshaw puller, textile-shop owner with 9 workers. Formal: private school (25), police constable, government nurse, bus company (20+), construction company with 10 workers, state government computer operator (public establishment), electricity-office clerk.
NCERT exercise — answer outlines
Try each question yourself first, then open the outline to compare. Q5 and Q6 are fill-in-the-blank; they are also in the self-check.
1. Who is a worker?
Anyone engaged in an economic activity (contributing to GNP), in any capacity — paid, self-employed or helping; including those temporarily absent through illness, injury, weather or festivals.
2. Define worker-population ratio.
Number of workers ÷ total population × 100; it shows the share of the population engaged in producing goods and services (43.7 in 2023–24).
3. Are the following workers — a beggar, a thief, a smuggler, a gambler? Why?
No. They do not produce goods or services that add to GNP; begging is a transfer, and theft, smuggling and gambling are illegal or unproductive transfers, not economic activities.
4. Find the odd man out: owner of a saloon, a cobbler, a cashier in Mother Dairy, a tuition master, transport operator, construction worker.
By status, four are self-employed (saloon owner, cobbler, tuition master, transport operator); the cashier is regular salaried and the construction worker casual. The usual answer is the cashier (the only regular salaried worker); some keys pick the construction worker (the only casual one). State your basis.
5. The newly emerging jobs are found mostly in the ___ sector (service/manufacturing).
Service.
6. An establishment with four hired workers is known as ___ (formal/informal) sector establishment.
Informal (a private unit needs 10 or more hired workers to be formal).
7. Raj is going to school. When he is not in school, you will find him working in his farm. Can you consider him as a worker? Why?
Yes, for the time he works on the farm — he is engaged in an economic activity (helping the main worker on a family farm adds to output). Surveys count such subsidiary work. (Child labour concerns apply if he is young.)
8. Compared to urban women, more rural women are found working. Why?
Poverty makes staying home unaffordable; family farms and allied work are close by and count as work; urban women study longer, face fewer suitable jobs, safety and transport issues, and higher-income families discourage work. Table 6.1: 34.8 rural vs 20.7 urban.
9. Meena is a housewife. Besides taking care of household chores, she works in the cloth shop which is owned and operated by her husband. Can she be considered as a worker? Why?
Yes — as a helper in the family enterprise she is engaged in an economic activity (self-employed, helping the main worker), even if unpaid. Her household chores are not counted as economic activity.
10. Find the odd man out: rickshaw puller who works under a rickshaw owner, mason, mechanic shop worker, shoeshine boy.
Shoeshine boy — self-employed; the others work for someone else as hired (largely casual) workers.
11. Analyse the 1972–73 workforce table (rural: male 125, female 69, total 195; urban: male 32, female 7, total 39 million).
Total ≈ 234 million; rural 83%; women ≈ 33% of workers (76 of 234), but only 7 of 39 urban workers (18%). Reasons: agrarian economy, limited urban industry, women's work concentrated on farms. Check: 125 + 69 = 194, not 195 — a rounding difference.
12. Estimate urban and total workforce for 1999–2000 (rural population 71.88 crore, WPR 41.9; urban 28.52 crore, WPR 33.7; total 100.40 crore, WPR 39.5).
Workers = population × WPR ÷ 100 (the book's ‘71.88 × 41.9 = 30.12’ omits the ÷ 100). Rural 30.12 crore; urban 28.52 × 33.7 ÷ 100 = 9.61 crore; total 100.40 × 39.5 ÷ 100 = 39.66 crore (rural + urban = 39.73; the small gap is rounding in the ratios).
13. Why are regular salaried employees more in urban areas than in rural areas?
Urban enterprises — factories, offices, shops, services — need workers on a regular basis; rural workers mostly cultivate their own land (self-employed). Chart 6.2: 48% regular urban vs 13% rural.
14. Why are less women found in regular salaried employment?
Lower education and skills; social restrictions on mobility and work hours; care burdens; discrimination; concentration in farming (64% of women workers); few regular jobs near home. Chart 6.1: 16% vs 21% for men.
15. Analyse the recent trends in sectoral distribution of workforce in India.
Primary down from 74.3 (1972–73) to 46.1 (2023–24); secondary up to about 24 and services to about 30; but since 2011–12 secondary has stagnated (24.3 → 24.1) and primary stopped falling (46.1 in both 2017–18 and 2023–24); services slowly rising. Movement off farms has slowed.
16. Compared to the 1970s, there has hardly been any change in the distribution of workforce across various industries. Comment.
Partly true: farming still employs the largest share and manufacturing never absorbed large numbers. But the primary share did fall by about 28 points (74.3 → 46.1) and services nearly doubled — real but slow change, far slower than the change in output shares (Chapter 2).
17. Do you think that during 1950–2010 employment generated in the country is commensurate with the growth of GDP in India? How?
No. Chart 6.3: GDP grew 3–8.7% while employment grew mostly under 2%, and only 0.28% in 2005–10 against 8.7% GDP growth — jobless growth; capital-intensive and service-led growth with low employment elasticity.
18. Is it necessary to generate employment in the formal sector rather than in the informal sector? Why?
Formal jobs give security, higher pay, social security and labour rights, so expanding them improves quality of employment. But the informal sector absorbs most workers and is a source of livelihood and enterprise — the balanced answer is to create formal jobs and extend social security and productivity to informal workers.
19. Victor is able to get work only for two hours in a day. Rest of the day, he is looking for work. Is he unemployed? Why? What kind of jobs could persons like Victor be doing?
By NCERT's definition (no work for even one hour in half a day) he is not unemployed — he is underemployed, working less than he wants. Such people do casual, part-time work: loading, delivery, domestic help, vending, construction helpers, tuition.
20. If you advise your village panchayat, what activities would improve the village and generate employment?
Public works under the rural employment scheme (ponds, check dams, roads); dairy, poultry, fisheries and horticulture (Chapter 5); food processing and cold storage; SHG micro-enterprises; skill centres; rural tourism and crafts; solar and biogas units.
21. Who is a casual wage labourer?
A worker engaged casually by others (farms, construction, loading) and paid for the work done, without regular employment, contract or social security — about 20% of India's workers (2023–24).
22. How will you know whether a worker is working in the informal sector?
Check the establishment: if it is not public and employs fewer than 10 hired workers — or the worker is self-employed without hired workers, a farmer or farm labourer, or a non-farm casual worker for many employers — it is informal. Typical signs: no social security, no regular wage, no union.
What to remember
Numbers
Workforce, 2022–23about 545 million; rural ≈ two-thirds
Men's share of workersabout 77%
Worker-population ratio, 2023–2443.7 (rural 45.6, urban 38.9)
WPR men / women, 2023–2456.4 / 30.7 (urban women 20.7)
Status, 2023–24self-employed 58.4 · regular 21.7 · casual 19.9
Sector, 2023–24primary 46.1 · secondary 24.1 · services 29.8
Primary share, 1972–73 → 2023–2474.3 → 46.1
Women workers in primary sector64.4%
Urban workers in services60.9%
Employment growthmostly ≤ 2% a year (1951–2023)
2005–10GDP 8.7% vs employment 0.28%
Casual share peak31.8% (1993–94)
Formal / informal workers, 2019–2059 / 476 million (≈ 11% / 89%)
Formal workers in 2012about 30 million, 18 million in the public sector
Formal sector threshold10 or more hired workers (private)
Ahmedabad mills60+ mills, 1,50,000 workers; ~80,000 permanent + 50,000 others lost jobs
Disguised unemployment (late-1950s study)about one-third of farm workers
MGNREGA2005; 100 days per rural household
One-liners
- Worker = engaged in an economic activity, paid or not.
- Worker-population ratio = workers ÷ population × 100.
- Self-employed > regular > casual — but casual are the most vulnerable.
- Towns: regular jobs lead; villages: self-employment leads.
- Jobless growth: GDP up, jobs barely.
- Casualisation peaked in 1993–94 and has since reversed.
- Formal = public + private with 10+ hired workers.
- Disguised unemployment: marginal product of labour ≈ zero.
Traps to avoid
- Beggars, thieves, smugglers, gamblers are not workers.
- An establishment with 4 hired workers is informal.
- Victor (2 hours a day) is underemployed, not unemployed, by NCERT's definition.
- NCERT text's WPR of 41.1 is older than Table 6.1's 43.7 (2023–24).
- Employment growth exceeded 2% three times in Chart 6.3 (1961–66 too), not two.
- Table 6.3's 1983 sector column adds to 97.0 — a misprint.
- Casual share in 2023–24 (19.9) is below 1972–73 (23.2), despite ‘casualisation’ in the text.
- Exercise Q12 needs ÷ 100: workers = population × WPR ÷ 100.
- Primary still employs 46%, not ‘three-fifths’ (Recap) or ‘more than half’ (section 6.7).
- Public sector establishments are formal regardless of size.
How to strategise
Prelims — what UPSC asks
- Concepts: disguised unemployment = zero marginal productivity (2013) and its causes (1992); frictional unemployment (1992); low employment elasticity of financial services (1993); capital-intensive industry and unemployment (1982); underdeveloped countries have most labour in primary activities (1987).
- Workers' rights and schemes: casual workers' entitlements (2021), fixed-term employment rules (2019), Atal Pension Yojana for unorganised workers (2016), Maharashtra's Employment Guarantee Scheme (1993).
- Post-1991 rural labour: rural non-farm growth up, rural employment growth down (2020).
- Expect statement questions on PLFS definitions, the formal/informal threshold, and the four labour codes.
Mains — where it appears and how to answer
- GS3: jobless growth (2015), globalisation and informalisation (2016), Make in India, Skill India and labour reform (2015), structural unemployment and its measurement (2023), the four labour codes (2024).
- GS1/GS2: gig economy and women (2021), inflation and unemployment management (2022), education–skill–employment linkages (2023, shared with Chapter 4).
- Answer frame: definitions (worker, WPR, status) → data (Tables 6.1–6.3, Chart 6.3, Chart 6.4) → trends (sectoral shift, jobless growth, casualisation then partial reversal, 89% informal) → causes (capital-intensive growth, weak manufacturing, labour laws, skills) → policy (employment programmes, social security, labour codes, labour-intensive manufacturing) → balanced conclusion.
Self-check
Tap an option. NCERT's own exercise questions come first; the rest test the figures and common confusions.
1. NCERT Q5: The newly emerging jobs are found mostly in the ___ sector.
2. NCERT Q6: An establishment with four hired workers is a ___ sector establishment.
3. According to NCERT Table 6.1, the worker-population ratio for urban women in 2023–24 was about:
4. In 2023–24, the largest share of India's workers were:
5. Disguised unemployment generally means:
6. ‘Jobless growth’ refers to:
7. The primary sector's share of India's workforce fell between 1972–73 and 2023–24 from about:
UPSC questions from this chapter
Open any question to attempt it in the Question bank — your attempt is saved to your progress.