The latest Annual Survey of Industries shows emoluments growing faster than employment in registered manufacturing. Examine what this implies for the quality of industrial jobs and labour productivity in India.

MoSPI released the Annual Survey of Industries (ASI) 2024-25 on 30 September 2026. It shows total emoluments rising 12.08% while persons engaged rose 7.19% to about 2.10 crore [1]. This points to better industrial jobs. However, the headline overstates the gain, and productivity is rising more slowly than pay.

Implications for job quality

• Pay per person rose only about 4.6%, not 12%. Much of the increase in total pay simply reflects more people on the payroll (1.1208 ÷ 1.0719) [1].
• These are formal jobs. ASI covers factories under Sec 2m of the Factories Act, 1948 (≥10 workers with power, ≥20 without) [2], so they carry statutory protections.
• Bigger units: operating factories grew only about 2.6%, much slower than employment [1]. Existing units are adding workers, and larger units are usually more stable employers.
• Caveats:
• The figures are in current prices, so inflation takes away much of the rise.
• Composition effect: "workers" are only about 79% of persons engaged, and managerial pay lifts the average. Maharashtra has 13.08% of employment but 17.64% of emoluments [1].
• The headline gives no split of contract workers. Some "new" jobs may be units that crossed the registration threshold rather than fresh hiring [2].

Implications for labour productivity

• Productivity rose: GVA grew 9.59%, faster than employment, so GVA per person rose about 2.2% [1].
• Pay is outpacing productivity: emoluments rose from about 29.1% to 29.8% of GVA, and net profit (+7.73%) grew more slowly than GVA [1].
• Capital deepening: invested capital grew 11.10%, faster than GVA, so each rupee of capital produced less value [1]. Capital-intensive industries such as basic metals, motor vehicles and chemicals account for over 45% of GVA [1].
• Risk: if pay keeps rising faster than productivity, firms may replace workers with machines and slow hiring.

Way forward

• MoSPI should put per-worker, inflation-adjusted pay and the contract-worker share in its headline release.
• ASI should be read alongside PLFS and ASUSE to separate genuinely new jobs from jobs that were informal and have now been registered.
• Linking pay to productivity through skilling and technology upgrades would help labour-intensive sectors.

Overall, the ASI signals modest gains in the quality of formal jobs, but these gains depend on productivity catching up with pay. Better data and productivity-led growth can make industrial employment more stable and help deliver the decent work goal of SDG 8.