Economic Survey 2025: Employment increased in agriculture sector, decreased in manufacturing and services

Even though the Economic Survey 2024-25 has presented a bright picture of employment, it has proved that the government has been unable to shift employment from agriculture to other sectors by talking about employment decline in the services and construction sectors and rise in agricultural jobs.

The government had said in the Economic Survey 2023-24 that the Indian economy would need to create an average of 7.85 million non-farm jobs annually by 2030 to productively engage its growing working population.

This means that India needs to remove about 3.5 million people from agriculture every year and create 7.85 million jobs in non-agricultural sectors to achieve the transition from agricultural to non-agricultural employment.

The Economic Survey 2024-25 shows that the government has not been able to shift people from the agriculture sector to services or manufacturing. The Economic Survey says that the agriculture sector still remains the leader in employment. Its share in employment was 44.1 per cent in 2017-18, which has increased to 46.1 per cent in 2023-24. That means, during the last six years, dependence on agriculture for employment has increased by two per cent. In 2023, 45.8 per cent of employment was in the agriculture sector.

This figure shows that apart from agriculture, other sectors are not successful in generating employment. The Economic Survey 2024-25 also says that the share of industry and services sector in employment has seen a decline.

The survey document, quoting the report of the Periodic Labor Force Survey (PLFS) 2023-24, said the share of the manufacturing sector in providing employment in 2023-24 declined from 12.1 per cent to 11.4 per cent and the share of the services sector decreased from 31.1 per cent to 29.7 per cent, in comparison to 2017-18.

The Economic Survey 2024-25 also states that there has been a significant increase in the share of women workers in the agriculture sector. It has increased from 57 per cent in 2017-18 to 64.4 per cent in 2023-24. During this period, men’s participation in agriculture sector has declined from 40.2 per cent to 36.3 per cent.

During this period, women’s participation in agriculture sector increased by about 7.5 per cent and men’s participation decreased by about 4 per cent. This also indicates that expected employment is not being created in other sectors.

The Economic Survey also says female agricultural employment has increased from 73.2 per cent in 2017-18 to 76.9 per cent in 2023-24 while male participation has declined from 55 per cent to 49.4 per cent.

Women in urban areas mainly work in other services. Their share in this sector has reduced from 44.4 per cent to 40.1 per cent. The agriculture sector contributes about 16 per cent to the country’s GDP and supports about 46.1 per cent of the population.