India’s unemployment rate (UR) stood at 5.1 percent in April 2025, according to the data released by ministry of statistics and programme implementation (MoSPI) on Thursday.
MoSPI released its first ever monthly bulletin on the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) on May 15--for the month of April—to address the requirement of "high frequency labour market indicators" with enhanced coverage from the PLFS.
MoSPI had started deliberations on releasing the monthly PLFS bulletins in 2024, as many policymakers and analysts were of the view that there was no reliable source of real-time unemployment data. Analysts now feel that the monthly bulletins will be useful in gauging the real-time "state of economy", which will subsequently influence the country’s fiscal policies.
According to the data, unemployment rate among females stood at 5 percent during April, and among males at 5.2 percent. In the rural areas, the joblessness rate was at 4.5 percent, and in the urban areas at 6.5 percent. The figures depict the unemployment rate for all ages.
"The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) data was being quoted because we didn’t have a MoSPI generated data on jobs every month. This (monthly PLFS) data will give a clearer picture (on unemployment)," said Paras Jasrai, senior analyst, India Ratings and Research (Ind-Ra). According to CMIE, the unemployment rate in April was at 7.7 percent.
For perspective, the CMIE considers a person employed if he/she is engaged in any economic activity on the data of the survey or a day prior. Whereas, the PLFS considers a person employed, if he/she has engaged in any activity in a week prior to the survey exercise, also known as ‘Unemployment rate in current weekly status (CWS)’.
NR Bhanumurthy, director, Madras School of Economics said that the monthly PLFS bulletin was a much-awaited data, which MoSPI was able to compile in a short span of time. "However, since this is the first ever monthly UR print, giving a future outlook based on it would be difficult. The data needs some time to stabilise, and only then any view linked to it can be formed," he said.
For the PLFS, the total number of households surveyed by MoSPI was 89,434 (49,323 in rural areas and 40,111 in urban areas) and number of persons surveyed was 3,80,838 (2,17,483 in rural areas and 1,63,355 in urban areas).
The overall labour force participation rate (LFPR) for all age groups was 42 percent in April. In urban areas, the LFPR was 39.9 percent, and in rural areas, it was 42.9 percent. The LFPR is defined as the percentage of persons in labour force (working or seeking or available for work) in the country’s total population.
The worker population ratio (WPR) -- percentage of employed persons in the population – stood at 39.8 percent in April 2025. The urban WPR was at 37.3 percent, and the rural was at 41 percent. Notably, the male WPR was 54.8 percent in April, and that of female’s was 24.9 percent.
In it’s bulletin, MoSPI said that the sample design of the PLFS has been revamped from January 2025. As part of revamping of the sample design monthly rotational panel scheme has been implemented for both rural and urban areas wherein each selected household is visited four times in four consecutive months – one with first visit schedule and other three with the revisit schedule in the following three months, the ministry said.
Moreover, the aspects related to the multistage stratified design followed in PLFS, such as the choice of First stage Units (FSU) to be surveyed, the primary geographical unit (i.e. basic stratum) from which FSUs are selected, have been changed. The number of households to be surveyed within a selected FSU has been increased from 8 to 12 households, said the ministry.
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