A large proportion of those classified as ’employed’ in official statistics are, in fact, self-employed. This trend is also reflected in the latest report from the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS).
A survey by the Union Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, released on Tuesday, shows that 62.7% of those employed in rural areas during the July–September period of the current year are self-employed. The share of self-employment in rural areas has risen from 61.4% to 62.7%.
In the July–September quarter, 579 million people aged 15 and above were employed (including the self-employed). This figure comprised 405 million men and 174 million women—meaning the number of employed women was less than half that of men.
The survey indicates that the rural unemployment rate was 4.8 percent in the April–June quarter of the current year. It declined slightly to 4.3 percent in the July–September period. In urban areas, the unemployment rate rose from 6.7 percent to 6.8 percent.
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