India’s overall unemployment rate among the persons aged 15 years and above declined marginally in the second quarter of 2025-26 even though there was a slight uptick in joblessness in the urban areas and among the people in the 15-to-29-year age group, according to the quarterly Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) released by Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation on Monday.
The unemployment rate as per Current Weekly Status (CWS) approach edged down to 5.2% in Q2 from 5.4% in April-June quarter, driven by the rural areas, where the jobless rate fell to 4.4% from 4.8% with improvements for both men and women.
In urban areas, however, unemployment rose slightly, from 6.1% to 6.2% for male and from 8.9% to 9.0% for females.
The unemployment rate for people in the 15-to-29-year age group showed a marginal uptick from 14.6% to 14.8%, which reflects that the job opportunities for new entrants in the market are hardly adequate.
The CWS approach determines an individual’s activity status based on the last seven days preceding the survey date. According to the CWS approach, a person was considered as unemployed in a week if he/she did not work even for 1 hour on any day during the reference week but sought or was available for work at least for 1 hour on any day during the same week.
The survey, based on data collected from a total of 5,64,828 persons, highlighted a modest rise in Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR) to 55.1% from 55.0% in the previous quarter. The uptick was observed in both rural (57.1% to 57.2%) and urban (50.6% to 50.7%) areas.
Women’s participation in the workforce also showed some upward momentum in the second quarter. It climbed to 33.7% from 33.4% in the previous quarter, reflecting a continued but modest upward movement in women’s engagement with the labour market. The gain was largely due to an increase in female LFPR in rural areas, where it rose from 37.0% to 37.5%.
The Worker Population Ratio (WPR), which measures the share of employed people, also improved marginally to 52.2% from 52%, largely driven by the increased participation of women, particularly in rural regions. The female WPR increased to 32% from 31.6%.
“The overall WPR for females continued to improve during the quarter, reflecting a positive shift in women’s engagement in the workforce,” the MoSPI said.
On the employment pattern, the survey showed self-employment dominating in the rural areas, increasing to 62.8% from 60.7%, while salaried jobs were more common in urban sectors. The share of salaried employment rose to 49.8% in the second quarter from 49.4% in April-June. The share of self-employed was steady at 39.3 percent.
The survey further highlighted that the majority of the workforce (57.7%) in rural areas were engaged in the agriculture sector. An increase of 4.2% percentage points, attributed to season agriculture operations, was observed in the second quarter from 53.5% in the first quarter. In the urban areas, the tertiary sector remained dominant, engaging 62.0% of workers.
The July-September bulletin is second in the series of PLFS quarterly bulletins covering both rural and urban areas. The PLFS quarterly bulletins released prior to January this year presented labour market indicators for urban areas only.
The ministry also stated that on an average, 56.2 crore persons (aged 15 years and above) were employed in the country during the July– September quarter, of which 39.6 crore were male and 16.6 crore were female. For the quarterly PLFS, the ministry surveyed 3,22,992 persons in rural areas and 2,41,836 in urban areas.