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India's employment numbers are rising by most official measures, yet the data that sits behind the headlines tells a more complicated story about where gains are concentrated and whether they represent durable, quality work.
The Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) shows regular wage or salaried employment increased from 22.4% of workers in 2024 to 23.6% in 2025 a meaningful shift, but still a modest share of the total workforce. Even after that rise, 56.2% of workers in 2025 remained self-employed, predominantly in own-account and unpaid family labour, while another 20.2% were casual wage labourers.
Agriculture still accounted for 43% of all employment in 2025, barely changed from 42% in 2019, according to PLFS data, a structural feature that the EPFO payroll numbers, which track only formally registered workers, do not capture.
EPFO figures, cited by the government as evidence of a formal jobs boom, recorded net additions of over 1.29 crore subscribers in 2024–25. The government has linked formalisation directly to "quality jobs" and in August 2026 promoted the Pradhan Mantri Viksit Bharat Rozgar Yojana to incentivise first-time formal employment through EPFO. Yet analysts caution that EPFO enrolment does not automatically mean new jobs , it can also reflect existing informal workers being registered for the first time.
Geographically, the picture divides sharply. The tertiary sector remains the dominant source of urban employment, while rural workers are concentrated in agriculture and allied activities. Urban youth unemployment stood at 17.2% in April 2025, more than four percentage points above the rural rate, pointing to a mismatch between the kinds of jobs being created and the skills and locations of job seekers.
In white-collar hiring, AI and non-IT sectors are driving growth. Hiring activity rose 15% year-on-year in 2025, with hospitality, insurance and education leading non-IT gains, and AI-linked roles exceeding 2.9 lakh postings for the year, according to the foundit Insights Tracker. High-paying roles above ₹20 lakh per annum grew by 21% in July 2025 on the Naukri JobSpeak Index , a concentration at the top end that does not reflect conditions across the broader labour market.
