The Economic Survey 2022-23 tabled by the Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs, Smt Nirmala Sitharaman in Parliament on 31 January 2023 states that while the pandemic impacted both labour markets, and employment ratios, now with sustained effort in the last few years, coupled with quick response after the pandemic, and the world's largest vaccination drive being undertaken in India, labour markets have recovered beyond pre-Covid levels, in both urban and rural areas, as observed in supply-side and demand-side employment data. Labour markets have recovered beyond pre-Covid levels, in both urban and rural areas, with unemployment rates falling from 5.8% in 2018-19 to 4.2% in 2020-21. As per Usual Status in Periodic Labour Force Survey(PLFS), the Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR), Worker Population Ratio (WPR) and unemployment rate (UR) in PLFS 2020-21(July-June) have improved for both males and females in both rural and urban areas compared to PLFS 2019-20 and 2018-19. The Labour Force Participation Rate for males has gone up to 57.5% in 2020-21, as compared to 55.6% in 2018-19. Female Labour Force Participation Rate has gone up to 25.1% in 2020-21 from 18.6% in 2018-19. There is a notable rise in Rural Female Labour Force Participation Rate from 19.7 % in 2018-19 to 27.7% in 2020-21.

According to broad status in employment, the share of self-employed increased and that of regular wage/salaried workers declined in 2020-21 vis-à-vis 2019-20, driven by trend in both rural and urban areas. The share of casual labour declined slightly, driven by rural areas. As per the Economic Survey, based on the industry of work, the share of workers engaged in agriculture rose marginally from 45.6% in 2019-20 to 46.5% in 2020-21, the share of manufacturing declined faintly from 11.2% to 10.9%, the share of construction increased from 11.6% to 12.1%, and share of trade, hotel & restaurants declined from 13.2% to 12.2%, over the same period.

The PLFS conducted by the MoSPI at a quarterly level for urban areas is available till July-September 2022. The data shows an improvement in all the key labour market indicators in the quarter ending September 2022 both sequentially and over the last year, as per the Current Weekly Status. The labour participation rate increased to 47.9% in July-September 2022 from 46.9% a year ago, while the worker-population ratio strengthened from 42.3% to 44.5% in the same period.This trend highlights that the labour markets have recovered from the Covid impact.

Ministry of Labour and Employment (MoLE) has developed E-Shram portal for creating a National database of unorganised workers, which is verified with Aadhaar. It captures details of workers like name, occupation, address, occupation type, educational qualification, and skill types etc., for the optimum realisation of their employability and extend the benefits of the social security schemes to them. It is the first-ever national database of unorganised workers, including migrant workers, construction workers, gig and platform workers, etc. Currently, E-Shram portal has been linked to NCS portal and ASEEM portal for seamless facilitation of services.

As on 31 December 2022, total over 28.5 crore unorganised workers have been registered on E-Shram portal. Female registrations stood at 52.8% of the total and 61.7% of total registrations belonged to the age group 18-40 years. State-wise, Uttar Pradesh (29.1%), Bihar (10.0%), and West Bengal (9.0%) accounted for nearly half of total registrations. Agriculture sector workers contributed to 52.4% of the total registrations, followed by domestic and household workers (9.8%), and construction workers (9.1%).