India’s headline unemployment rate has decreased continuously in the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) that started in 2017-18. This was possible because more jobs than job-seekers were added to India’s labour market between 2017-18 and 2022-23. However, not all of these jobs were good. Unpaid family workers have contributed to 37% of the growth in India’s workforce since 2017-18. The share of such of unpaid workers in the workforce is now not very different from regular wage or salaried workers. Unpaid family workers accounted for 18.3% of the workers in the 2022-23 PLFS compared to the 20.9% share of regular wage workers. These numbers were 13.6% and 22.8% for unpaid workers and regular workers in 2017-18. Who are these unpaid workers and what has contributed to their growth? Here are five charts that answer these questions.
