Casual workers

Also called: Daily wage labour, Casual wage labourers, Casual labour, Casual wage labour · Topic: Employment, Unemployment and Informalisation · NCERT: Class 10, Ch 2 "Sectors of the Indian Economy"; Class 10, Ch 4 "Globalisation and the Indian Economy"; Class 11, Ch 6 "Employment: Growth, Informalisation and Other Issues"

Meaning

Casual workers are people hired on others' farms or enterprises only when there is work, and paid for the work they have done. They have no regular, steady attachment to one employer. They are also called daily wage labour or casual wage labourers. In India they are about one-fifth of all workers (19.8% in 2023-24 [3]; NCERT gives 19.9%). NCERT calls them the most vulnerable of the three employment groups, because their work, pay and security can stop at any time.

Formula: share of casual workers (%) = (casual workers ÷ total workers) × 100

Explanation

Where casual work fits: status of employment

• Status of employment means a worker's position in the enterprise where they work. India uses three broad statuses:
• Self-employed: owns and runs an enterprise. About 58% of workers (58.4% in 2023-24 [3]).
• Regular salaried: hired by a person or enterprise and paid regularly. About 22% (21.7% in 2023-24).

• Casual: hired casually and paid for work done. About 20% (19.8% in 2023-24 [3]).

• Why status matters:

• The Worker Population Ratio (WPR) is the percentage of people in the population who have work [2]. It tells us how many people work, not how good their jobs are.
• Status shows one part of job quality: how secure the job is (attachment) and how much say the worker has (authority).
• Casual workers score lowest on both. They have no job security and no control over the enterprise.

How to identify a casual worker

• NCERT's construction-site example:
• The cement-shop owner is self-employed.
• The civil engineer in a construction company is regular salaried.

• The construction worker is casual. Brick-making is NCERT's other example (Fig. 6.2).

• Other examples (NCERT Class 11 drill):

• A loading worker in a wholesale vegetable shop is casual, because they are hired only when there is work.

• The key test is attachment to the job, not how often the worker is paid.

• A rice-mill worker "paid daily but employed regularly" is a regular worker, not a casual one.

• Being paid every day does not make someone casual. Being hired again and again, only when needed, does.

• Gender pattern: casual work is the second-largest source of work for women, after self-employment (NCERT charts).

What makes the casual share rise or fall

• Casualisation (1972-73 to 1993-94): the casual share rose from 23.2% to a peak of 31.8%.

• Workers moved out of self-employment, such as small farming, into casual wage work.

• After the mid-1990s it fell: 30.0% (2011-12), then 23.3% (2017-18, NCERT), then 19.9% (2023-24).

• Why it fell recently (official view):
• Casual workers have moved into more structured self-employment [3].
• More jobs are being formalised (brought into registered payrolls with social security). Net additions to EPFO (Employees' Provident Fund Organisation) subscriptions rose from 61 lakh (FY19) to 131 lakh (FY24) [3].

Worked example: share versus number

• Suppose there are 100 workers in 2023-24. About 20 are casual, 58 self-employed and 22 regular.
• The shares always add up to 100. So if one share falls, another must rise.
• From 2017-18 to 2023-24, the casual share fell by 5.1 percentage points (24.9 → 19.8) [3].

• In the same period, the self-employment share rose by 6.2 points (52.2 → 58.4) [3].

• A falling share does not always mean fewer casual workers.

• The workforce itself grew, as WPR rose from 46.8% (2017-18) to 58.2% (2023-24) [2].
• Illustration (made-up numbers): 25% of 100 workers = 25 casual workers. 20% of 130 workers = 26 casual workers. The share falls, but the number rises.

In India

• Who measures it: the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI). It started the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) in April 2017 [2]. Figures from 1972-73 to 2011-12 come from the NSSO's large five-yearly employment–unemployment surveys.
• How PLFS counts status:
• Usual status is a person's main activity over the last 365 days [2].
• Principal status (ps) is the activity on which the person spent the most time in those 365 days [2].
• Subsidiary status (ss) is extra economic work done for 30 days or more in the year [2].
• Headline shares of casual workers use usual status (ps+ss).

• Current Weekly Status (CWS) looks only at the last 7 days [2].

• Latest figure: casual workers were 19.8% of the workforce in 2023-24, down from 24.9% in 2017-18, according to the Economic Survey 2024-25 [3]. NCERT gives 23.3% and 19.9% for the same years. The two sources differ only in the 2017-18 base, and both show a fall.

• Long trend (NCERT Table 6.3, % of workforce):

Year	1972-73	1983	1993-94	2011-12	2017-18	2023-24
Casual	23.2	28.9	31.8	30.0	23.3	19.9

• Protection for casual and other unorganised workers:
• The e-Shram portal was launched on 26 August 2021. It builds a National Database of Unorganised Workers (NDUW) and gives each registered worker a Universal Account Number (UAN) [3].
• More than 30.51 crore unorganised workers had registered by 31 December 2024 [3].
• 12 schemes are integrated or mapped with e-Shram [3].

Don't confuse with

• Regular salaried worker: the difference is regular attachment to the job, not how often pay comes. A worker paid daily but employed regularly is regular, not casual.
• Unpaid family worker (helper in a household enterprise): also gets no regular pay, but works in a family business or farm run by a relative. Indian data counts them as self-employed, not casual.
• ILO "vulnerable employment": this means own-account workers plus contributing family workers [4][5]. It is not the same as casual work. The ILO counts wage and salaried workers, which includes casual wage workers, together with employers as non-vulnerable [5]. The ILO calls contributing family workers, not casual workers, the most vulnerable status [4]. NCERT's "most vulnerable" label for casual workers is India's own framing.
• Informal worker: informality is about having no written contract or social security. Casual workers are almost always informal. But a regular worker can also be informal, for example a regular employee with no written contract and no PF.

Prelims Hooks

• India's three employment statuses are self-employed, regular salaried and casual. Casual workers are about 20% of the workforce (19.8% in 2023-24 [3]; NCERT: 19.9%).
• Casual work peaked at 31.8% in 1993-94, the casualisation phase. Trap: the peak was not in 1972-73 (23.2%) or 2011-12 (30.0%).
• Trap: a rice-mill worker "paid daily but employed regularly" is regular. A loading worker in a wholesale vegetable shop, hired only when there is work, is casual.
• Casual work is the second-largest source of work for women, after self-employment.
• PLFS was launched by the NSSO (MoSPI) in April 2017. Usual status uses 365 days, subsidiary status needs 30 days or more, and CWS uses 7 days [2].
• e-Shram (launched 26 August 2021) had 30.51 crore registrations by 31 December 2024, with 12 schemes mapped to it [3].

Mains Points

• Falling casualisation: real gain or a change of label?
• Casual work fell from 31.8% (1993-94) to about 20% (2023-24). This helps, because casual workers are the most vulnerable group.
• The official view says they moved into structured self-employment [3]. Critics point out that much new self-employment is own-account or unpaid helper work, which the ILO classes as vulnerable [4][5].

• A good answer asks where casual workers went: into decent regular jobs, or into low-earning self-employment (the working poor, people who work but still earn too little to lift their households above the poverty line).

• Social security for casual workers (GS-II/GS-III):

• Casual workers have no contract, no steady income and no PF. e-Shram, with 30.51 crore registrations by 31 December 2024 [3], is a first step towards reaching them.

• Link this to the Labour Codes and to social security for gig and platform workers.

• Better status is not the same as better pay:

• The Economic Survey 2024-25 notes that corporate profits reached a 15-year peak in FY24 while wages lagged [3].
• Casual workers need employment-intensive growth, for example in labour-heavy manufacturing and MSMEs, so that leaving casual work also means higher and steadier earnings.

Related concepts

• Status of employment
• Self-employed
• Unpaid family worker
• Regular salaried employees
• Working poor

Read more

• Status of employment: self-employed, regular salaried and casual workers