PLFS Workforce Explorer
Who actually works in India — and how far apart are women and men? Labour-force participation, the worker ratio and unemployment, across every state and by gender. Drawn from the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), the government's official measure of employment. Where the learning ladder (ASER → UDISE+ → AISHE) finally meets the economy.
What is PLFS — and why it matters
The Periodic Labour Force Survey is how India officially counts who is working, looking for work, or out of the labour force. Its three headline numbers: LFPR (the share of people working or seeking work), WPR (the share actually employed), and the unemployment rate (the share of the labour force without work). The single biggest fact it reveals is the gender gap: barely two in five Indian women are in the labour force, against nearly four in five men — one of the widest such gaps in the world. But the gap is closing fast, and PLFS is where you can watch it happen.
▸ How to read this explorer
- Start with the question. Tap any underlined word to change the measure, the gender, or the view.
- All three measures are percentages of the 15-and-older population (LFPR, WPR) or of the labour force (unemployment). The dashed line marks the All-India figure.
- Three views: Rank the states, Track the national trend since 2017-18 (watch the women's line climb), or List the table.
- Figures are state-level — PLFS is designed for state and national estimates, not districts, so there is no district drill-down here.
Making sense of the numbers
What the measures mean. LFPR (Labour Force Participation Rate) is the share of people aged 15+ who are either working or actively seeking work. WPR (Worker Population Ratio) is the share actually employed. The unemployment rate is the share of the labour force (not the whole population) that is seeking work but hasn't found it — which is why a state can have low unemployment and low participation at once. All figures here use usual status (PS+SS) for the 15+ age group, rural and urban combined.
Reading it responsibly. A low female LFPR does not mean women aren't working — unpaid domestic and care work is not counted as "labour force". High-participation states like Himachal Pradesh reflect large agricultural and informal workforces; a high unemployment rate in a state like Kerala sits alongside high education and high wages (people can afford to wait for a good job). Read participation and unemployment together, and read a state against the All-India line and its own trend rather than in isolation.
The shift to watch. Women's LFPR has risen from about 23% in 2017-18 to nearly 42% in 2023-24 — the fastest change in these numbers, and the reason the trend view leads with the female line. How much reflects genuinely rising opportunity versus distress-driven and unpaid farm work is debated; the data shows the movement, not the cause.
Data pulled from the official MoSPI eSankhyiki PLFS data service (Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation, Government of India), PLFS annual 2017-18 to 2023-24. National figures were validated against the published PLFS 2023-24 report (LFPR 60.1%, male 78.8%, female 41.7%). Two small UTs (Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Daman & Diu) are omitted where the series did not return a value. This is an independent, source-linked interface for learning and discussion — for methodology and authoritative interpretation, consult MoSPI directly. ImpactMojo is not affiliated with MoSPI.