NEW DELHI: India’s female labour force participation rate rose to 34.6% in September 2026 from 34.1% a year earlier, according to the latest Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) bulletin released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. This data shows that rural female participation increased by one percentage point over the year to 38.9%. In urban India, the rate was 25.9%, broadly unchanged from a year earlier, although it rose from 25.4% in August.
The increase in participation does not, by itself, show whether women are finding paid work or entering better-paid jobs. The monthly bulletin reported that the female worker population ratio, which measures the share of women who were employed, rose by 0.5 percentage points year-on-year to 32.8%. In urban areas, the female worker population ratio increased from 23.2% in August to 23.5% in September.
The overall unemployment rate for women was 5.2% in September, compared with 5.1% in August. Rural female unemployment rate stood at 3.9%, its lowest level recorded during 2026, while urban female unemployment rate increased marginally from 8.9% to 9.2%.
The annual PLFS report for 2025 shows that women’s earnings grew faster than men’s across regular wage or salaried employment, self-employment and casual labour. Female earnings rose 7.2% in salaried work, against 5.8% for men, between 2024 and 2025.
Women’s self-employment earnings increased 8.8%, compared with 8% for men, while women’s earnings in the casual labour category rose 5.4%, while male earnings fell by 0.2%. Despite these gains, women earned 76% of male earnings in salaried employment and 69% in casual labour. The gap was widest in self-employment, where women earned just 36% of male earnings.
The employment distribution also shows that self-employment remains the largest category for female workers. Its share fell to 64.2% in 2025 from 66.5% in 2024. The share of women in regular wage or salaried jobs rose to 18.2% from 16.6%, while the share in casual labour increased to 17.6% from 16.9%. These figures do not establish whether women moving into self-employment are running profitable enterprises or working as unpaid helpers in family businesses.
The rural-urban divide remains pronounced. In rural India, self-employment accounted for 70.7% of female workers in 2025, compared with 40.4% in urban areas. Regular wage or salaried jobs accounted for 9.3% of rural female employment, against 50.9% in urban areas. Unpaid helpers in household enterprises made up 32.9% of rural female workers, compared with 11.8% in urban parts of the country.