Female employment

Getting workers ready for their jobs through specialised training is seen as an essential part of closing the 'skill gap'. Yet only a small minority of working-age Indians receive formal vocational training, while many more learn informally on the job or from their families.

As countries grow and develop and their workers gain more skills, most jobs become salaried or regular wage jobs. While the share of salaried jobs in India is growing, salaried workers remain a minority, and many do not have the benefits typically associated with such work.

A higher education is seen as a pathway to better jobs and wages. We examine the work that India's 140 million graduates do, and whether having a higher education is a guarantee of better employment.

One economic activity - tailoring - has come to play a significant role in Indian manufacturing, transforming women's employment in the sector in particular. We look at the growth of this activity, what tailoring work looks like, and what it means for India's manufacturing sector.

India's Periodic Labour Force Survey is a vital source of employment data, and drives research and policy. We track changes in its methodology and their implications, key uses of the dataset, and important debates around its methodology and findings.

The share of women in manufacturing jobs in India has risen, propelled by the apparel and textile sectors. Yet, women's manufacturing jobs are more precarious and secure jobs are relatively rare.

After being low by global standards for decades, and falling further since the mid 2000s, the share of Indian women who are in the labour force has increased. We examine the parts of the workforce and the economy where these changes have occurred.

Who is in India’s labour force, who is out of it, what work people in the labour force do, and who is unemployed.

Many women are out of India's paid workforce. But they're working - just not in the same ways as men.