Based on statistics issued by the Ministry of Statistics on Monday, the employment indicator in India, the labor force participation rate (LFPR), increased to 54.9% in July among individuals aged 15 and over from 54.2% in June.
Another measure of employment, the worker participation rate (WPR), among those aged 15 and over, rose from 53.3% in rural regions in June 2025 to 54.4% in rural areas in July of this year.
According to the data, WPR for people of the same age group in urban areas increased slightly from 46.8% in June 2025 to 47.0% in July 2025. This confirms the LFPR data showing a rise in employment.
As of July 2025, the WPR for rural females aged 15 and older was 35.5%, while the urban female WPR was 23.5%. Over the course of the month, the national female WPR for the same age group was 31.6%.
In July 2025, the unemployment rate for individuals aged 15 and over fell from 5.6% in June 2025 to 5.2%.The LFPR for individuals of the same age in rural and urban areas was 56.9% and 50.7%, respectively. The LFPR in CWS for males aged 15 and older who lived in rural areas was 78.1%, while the LFPR for males in urban areas of the same age was 75.1%.
According to the data, the LFPR fell from 35.2% recorded in June 2025 to 36.9% in July 2025 among rural women in the same age group. In order to produce high-frequency labor force statistics with broader coverage, the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) sampling methodology was revised starting in January 2025.
Under the Current Weekly Status (CWS), the new PLFS seeks to produce important employment and unemployment indicators each month for both rural and urban areas globally, including the Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR), Worker Population Ratio (WPR), and Unemployment Rate (UR).
In order to generate quarterly estimates of labor market indicators for both rural and urban India under the CWS framework, it also seeks to expand the Quarterly PLFS results to rural areas. Additionally, it offers yearly projections for important employment and unemployment metrics in both usual status and Current Weekly Status (CWS) for both urban and rural regions.
During the April–June quarter of 2025, the unemployment rate (UR) for both men and women aged 15 and over was 5.4%. In comparison to the urban areas’ UR of 6.8% during the April–June 2025 quarter, the overall rural UR was lower at 4.8%.
The majority of workers in rural areas were employed in the agriculture sector (44.6 percent of men and 70.9% of women), whereas the greatest source of employment in urban areas was the tertiary sector (60.6 percent of men and 64.9% of women).
During this quarter, the country employed 56.4 crore people (those aged 15 and over), with 39.7 crore of them being men and 16.7 crore being women, on average, according to ministry data.