North-eastern states have the highest shares of workers in government jobs
Jobs in the public sector remain among the most sought after in India. The public sector is made up of various departments and arms of the government, including companies run directly by the government. Jobs in the public sector are more secure with greater employment benefits than in the private sector.
Yet the public sector can only offer a minority of Indian adults jobs. Just 6% of workers in India are in the public sector. Another 6% of workers are in private companies. The majority of India's workers, meanwhile, are employed in household enterprises.
This data comes from the 2023-24 round of India's annual Periodic Labour Force Survey, a nationally representative labour survey conducted by the National Statistics Office.
The share of the workforce in government jobs is highest in India's north-east, where the private sector remains small. One in four jobs in Mizoram, Nagaland and Sikkim are in the public sector. The share of public sector jobs is also high In India's richer and better educated southern states, including Kerala and Tamil Nadu, where between 10% and 15% of the workforce is in the public sector.
The share of the workforce in public sector jobs is lowest in India's poorest regions with the lowest levels of education, including large parts of central and northern India. Only 3% of workers in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh are in government jobs, while more than 90% of the workforce there works in household enterprises.
Read more about the size of India's formal sector.
