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

Detail

1. What "status of employment" means

• Status of employment is the worker's position in the enterprise where they work. There are three broad statuses: self-employed, regular salaried and casual.
• Why it 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. It says nothing about the quality of their jobs.
• Status shows one dimension of job quality.
• It shows the worker's attachment to the job: how secure and steady the job is.

• It also shows the worker's authority: how much say they have over the enterprise and over co-workers.

• Where the data comes from:

• The National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), started the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) in April 2017 [2].

• Earlier figures (1972-73 to 2011-12) come from the NSSO's large five-yearly employment–unemployment surveys.

• How PLFS measures status (the "usual status" basis):

• Usual status (a person's main activity over the last 365 days) [2].
• Principal status (ps): the activity on which the person spent the most time in those 365 days [2].
• Subsidiary status (ss): extra economic work done for 30 days or more in the year [2].
• Headline status shares use usual status (ps+ss).
• Current Weekly Status (CWS) uses a reference period of only the last 7 days [2].

2. The three statuses (NCERT's construction-site example)

Worker	Status	Definition	Share of workforce (2023-24)	Features
Cement-shop owner	Self-employed	Owns and runs an enterprise to earn a living	about 58% (58.4% [3])	The largest source of livelihood
Construction worker	Casual worker	Hired casually on others' farms or enterprises and paid for the work done	about 20% (19.8% [3]; NCERT: 19.9%)	The most vulnerable group. Brick-making is NCERT's example (Fig. 6.2)
Civil engineer in a construction company	Regular salaried employee	Hired by a person or an enterprise and paid regularly	about 22%	More common in urban areas

• Unpaid family worker (also called a helper in a household enterprise):
• Helps in a family business or farm run by a relative.
• Gets no regular pay.

• Is counted within the self-employed in Indian data.

• International definitions (ILO):

• In 2018 the 20th International Conference of Labour Statisticians (ICLS) adopted a new classification called ICSE-18 (International Classification of Status in Employment). It has 10 detailed categories [4].
• Own-account workers are independent workers who run a household market enterprise without employees [4].
• Contributing family workers help a family or household member run a family business or farm [5].
  • The ILO calls this the most vulnerable status in employment [5].
  • They get no regular wage or salary [5].
  • They do not make the main decisions about the business [5].
• Vulnerable employment = own-account workers + contributing family workers [5][6].
• Non-vulnerable employment = wage and salaried workers + employers [6].
• India's self-employed group mixes both kinds: employers (non-vulnerable) and own-account workers and helpers (vulnerable). So a high self-employment share does not mean a lot of enterprise.

3. Gender and rural–urban pattern (NCERT Charts 6.1 and 6.2)

• Self-employment is over 50% for both men and women.
• Casual work is the second-largest source of work for women.
• Regular salaried jobs employ 21% of men and 16% of women (NCERT charts).
• Rural areas have more self-employed workers:
• Most farming families own and cultivate their plots.

• So a farmer and the family members who help are counted as self-employed.

• Urban areas have more regular employees:

• Urban enterprises such as factories, offices and shops need workers on a regular basis.

• Context: more women are working [2][3]

• Female Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR), the share of people who are working or looking for work, rose from 23.3% (2017-18) to 41.7% (2023-24).
• Female WPR rose from 22.0% (2017-18) to 40.3% (2023-24) [2].
• Rural female LFPR reached 47.6% (2023-24). Urban female LFPR was 28.0% (2023-24) [2].
• Many of these new women workers are own-account workers or helpers. This is one reason self-employment has risen.

4. Drill: classify the worker (NCERT Class 11 list)

• Self-employed: saloon owner; handloom weaver; cold-drink shop owner.
• Regular:
• SBI cashier.
• Private-hospital nurse on a monthly salary for five years.

• Rice-mill worker "paid daily but employed regularly". This is the trap: the status depends on regular attachment to the job, not on how often the worker is paid.

• Casual: loading worker in a wholesale vegetable shop. The worker is hired only when there is work.

5. Trends over five decades (NCERT Table 6.3, % of workforce)

Status	1972-73	1983	1993-94	2011-12	2017-18	2023-24
Self-employed	61.4	57.3	54.6	52.0	55.6	58.4
Regular salaried	15.4	13.8	13.6	18.0	21.1	21.7
Casual	23.2	28.9	31.8	30.0	23.3	19.9

• Official update: the Economic Survey 2024-25 gives these PLFS figures [3]:
• Self-employed rose from 52.2% (2017-18) to 58.4% (2023-24). (NCERT: 55.6% for 2017-18.)
• Casual workers fell from 24.9% (2017-18) to 19.8% (2023-24). (NCERT: 23.3% and 19.9%.)

• The gap is only in the 2017-18 base figures. The direction of change is the same: self-employment up, casual work down.

• How to read the table:

• Casualisation (1972-73 to 1993-94): casual work rose from 23.2% to 31.8% as workers moved out of self-employment into casual wage work.
• After the mid-1990s: casual work fell, reaching 19.9% (2023-24).
• Regular salaried work has risen since 2011-12, from 18.0% to 21.7%.

• Self-employment fell steadily until 2011-12. It has risen since 2017-18.

• Worked example: reading status shares

• Formula: share of a status (%) = (workers in that status ÷ total workers) × 100.
• Suppose 100 workers in 2023-24: about 58 are self-employed, 22 are regular and 20 are casual.
• The shares always add up to 100. So when one share rises, another must fall. From 2017-18 to 2023-24, the self-employment share rose by 6.2 percentage points (52.2 → 58.4) and the casual share fell by 5.1 points (24.9 → 19.8) [3].
• Note: a falling share does not always mean fewer casual workers in absolute numbers. The total workforce also grew as WPR rose from 46.8% (2017-18) to 58.2% (2023-24) [2].

6. Why the recent shifts? (Class 11 "explain" questions)

• The rise in regular salaried jobs:

• Formalisation means more jobs come under the organised sector, with registration, payroll records and social-security cover.

  • Stricter PF and GST compliance makes firms put workers on formal payrolls.
  • Net additions to EPFO (Employees' Provident Fund Organisation) subscriptions more than doubled, from 61 lakh (FY19) to 131 lakh (FY24) [3].
  • Nearly 61% of net payroll additions were people under 29 years of age [3].

• The "moderate rise in self-employment":

• More women are doing own-account and helper work, especially in rural areas [2][3].
• Distress self-employment after COVID: people who lost wage jobs started small, low-earning activities to survive.

• The official view gives other reasons [3]:

  • more entrepreneurial activity and a preference for flexible work;
  • schemes such as Mudra Yojana, Skill India, Start-Up India and Stand-Up India.

• Fall in casual work:

• The official view is that casual workers have moved into more structured self-employment [3].

7. Status is not the same as quality

• Self-employment does not necessarily pay more than casual work (NCERT Class 11 exercise).
• Working poor: people who have work but earn too little to lift their households above the poverty line.

• Own-account workers with tiny enterprises and unpaid helpers often fall in this group.

• Wages vs profits: the Economic Survey 2024-25 notes that corporate profits reached a 15-year peak in FY24, while wages lagged behind [3]. So better job status has not always meant better pay.

• Quality indicators beyond status:
• a written contract;
• social security (PF, pension, health cover);
• earnings and how regular they are;
• hours of work and paid leave.

• A "regular" worker can still be informal, for example a regular employee with no written contract and no PF.

• Protection for informal workers:

• The e-Shram portal was launched on 26 August 2021. It creates 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].

Prelims Hooks

• The three statuses are self-employed, regular salaried and casual. Unpaid family helpers are counted within the self-employed.
• Self-employed share: 58.4% (PLFS 2023-24) [3]. Trap: do not confuse this with WPR (15+) of 58.2% (2023-24) [2].
• Casual work peaked at 31.8% in 1993-94. That was the casualisation phase. It fell to about 19.8–19.9% in 2023-24 [3].
• The lowest share of regular salaried work in Table 6.3 is 13.6% (1993-94). It reached 21.7% (2023-24).
• PLFS was launched by the NSSO (MoSPI) in April 2017. Usual status uses a 365-day reference period. CWS uses 7 days [2].
• Subsidiary status means economic activity for 30 days or more in the reference year [2].
• ILO "vulnerable employment" = own-account workers + contributing family workers. Employers and wage workers are "non-vulnerable" [6].
• ICSE-18 was adopted at the 20th ICLS in 2018 and has 10 detailed categories [4].
• A rice-mill worker "paid daily but employed regularly" is a regular worker, not a casual one.
• e-Shram (launched 26 August 2021) had 30.51 crore registrations by 31 December 2024 [3].

Mains Points

• Rising self-employment: enterprise or distress?
• The official view links the rise from 52.2% to 58.4% (2017-18 to 2023-24) to entrepreneurship, flexible work and schemes like Mudra [3].
• Critics note that much of the rise comes from own-account workers and unpaid women helpers. The ILO classes both as vulnerable [5][6].

• Answers should weigh the higher female LFPR [2] against the risk of a growing group of working poor.

• Formalisation is real but slow:

• EPFO net additions doubled from 61 lakh (FY19) to 131 lakh (FY24) [3], and the regular salaried share rose to 21.7% (2023-24).
• But about 78% of workers are still self-employed or casual.

• Link this to the Labour Codes, the social security of gig and platform workers, and e-Shram [3].

• Status is not quality:

• A good answer adds contract, social security, earnings and hours to the status picture.

• Wages lagging behind record corporate profits (FY24) [3] shows the need for employment-intensive growth, for example in labour-heavy manufacturing and MSMEs, not just more jobs.

• Fall in casualisation (GS-III):

• Casual work fell from 31.8% (1993-94) to about 20% (2023-24). This helps workers, because casual workers are the most vulnerable.
• Policy should make sure these workers move into decent regular jobs, not into low-earning self-employment.