The missing realities in PLFS 2025

The 2025 iteration of the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) represents a welcome shift in the Indian government's efforts to capture more accurate and detailed data about the country's labor market.

- SHARANPREET KAUR

Structural changes have been introduced to improve the understanding of employment trends, but despite these developments, the survey continues to miss out on critical dimensions of India's labor reality. Most notably, it fails to adequately reflect the lives and work of informal laborers, migrant workers, and women engaged in precarious or unpaid labor.

These blind spots not only limit the usefulness of the data but also hinder policy efforts aimed at addressing systemic inequalities and ensuring inclusive economic growth.

India's workforce remains largely informal, with a significant proportion of laborers engaged in unregulated, low-paid, and often exploitative work conditions. While the PLFS has helped in generating broad labor statistics, it still falls short when it comes to capturing the nuanced and often invisible experiences of the informal sector. Precarity, which refers to work arrangements that lack stability, legal protection, or decent wages, is a common feature of the informal economy. Yet, this is precisely the kind of labor that remains underrepresented in national statistics. Workers in such settings often have no job security, face irregular incomes, and are excluded from basic labor protections like maternity benefits, health coverage, or pension schemes.