The challenge is more productive employment, Pg10

Key Highlights:

• Extreme poverty at the $3-a-day line fell to 2.6% in 2023; at the $4.2 lower-middle-income line, it fell from 57.7% in 2011 to 16.1% in 2023, per World Bank estimates cited.
• India's labour force participation rate rose to about 59% in 2025 (15 years and above), per the Periodic Labour Force Survey, as more women joined the workforce.
• Around 43% of India's workforce remains in agriculture, against 21.68% in China and 25% in Vietnam.
• Roughly three-fourths of non-farm workers are employed in informal enterprises, a segment marked by low productivity.
• 57% of India's poor are concentrated in the belt stretching from Uttar Pradesh to West Bengal.

Detailed Insights:

• The editorial argues that manufacturing, unlike in other Asian economies, has not absorbed low-skilled workers; jobs have expanded mostly in low-end services.
• Rising female participation has come largely through agriculture and self-employment, limiting overall productivity gains.
• PLFS data show agriculture's share of employment rose after 2018-19, reversing its earlier long decline.
• For the poorer northern belt, migration to high-income regions serves as a channel to non-farm employment.
• Moving into the upper-middle and then high-income category requires shifting workers from low to high-productivity jobs, it concludes.
• Schemes such as the Production Linked Incentive scheme aim to expand manufacturing employment and raise productivity.

Key Concepts Involved:

• Labour Force Participation Rate: The share of the population aged 15 and above that is working or actively seeking work.
• Informal employment: Jobs lacking written contracts and social security, mostly in small unorganised enterprises.
• Structural transformation: The shift of labour from low-productivity agriculture to higher-productivity industry and services.
• Periodic Labour Force Survey: The National Statistical Office's official survey measuring employment and unemployment in India.