Most Indian workers hold jobs that pay too little and protect even less. Unemployment is just 3.1% but, in 2025, 56.2% of workers were self-employed, 20.2% were casual labourers, and only 23.6% held a regular wage or salaried job.
Moreover, the scarcity of ‘good jobs’ shows in the scramble for them. Between 2014 and 2022, some 220 million applications were filed for central-govt jobs and 722,000 were selected. In a single recent recruitment, 4.7 million people applied for 26,000 constable posts.