At the all-India level, 40.8% of regular workers and 51.9% of casual workers did not receive the average daily minimum wage prescribed for unskilled workers in the agriculture sector from 2012-2022
Photo for representation. Courtesy: iStock For the decade 2012 to 2022, the “real” earning of a regular salaried and self-employed person in India has been declining, according to a recent report released by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Institute for Human Development (IHD), the Delhi-based non-profit set up by the Indian Society of Labour Economics.
The report India Employment Report 2024 says that the average monthly real earnings of regular salaried and self-employed people “have either declined or remained stable”. “Real” earning is an inflation-adjusted figure. The report has used data from Government of India sources.
“The average monthly real earnings for regular salaried workers declined annually by 1.2 per cent, from 12,100 rupees in 2012 to 11,155 rupees in 2019, and by 0.7 per cent as of 2022, to 10,925 rupees,” estimates the report.
The same trend is visible for self-employed Indians, who constitute a significant percentage of employed people. “The average real earnings of self-employed individuals declined annually by 0.8 per cent, from 7,017 rupees in 2019 to 6,843 rupees in 2022,” the report says.
However, the real monthly earnings of casual workers have increased in the past decade. “The average real monthly earnings of casual workers increased by 2.4 per cent annually, from 3,701 rupees in 2012 to 4,364 rupees in 2019, and by 2.6 per cent annually, to 4,712 rupees in 2022,” the report says.
“The declining real earnings of regular salaried workers and the self-employed, along with only a small increase in real wages for casual workers in India, indicates that the quality of employment generation was poor between 2000 and 2022,” attributes the ILO-IHD report to this trend.
The report analysed whether employed persons are getting the basic minimum wage as prescribed by the Union Ministry of Labour and Employment for various scheduled jobs based on skill-levels. “At the all-India level, 40.8 per cent of regular workers and 51.9 per cent of casual workers did not receive the average daily minimum wage prescribed for unskilled workers in the agriculture sector,” says the report based on data from the Periodic Labour Force Survey for 2022.
“Among the workers engaged in the construction sector, 39.3 per cent of regular workers and 69.5 per cent of casual workers did not receive the average daily minimum wage prescribed for unskilled workers in the sector,” the report says.
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