Some PerspectiveAnalysis

Jobs

Twelve consecutive years of formal employment decline

Every single year since 2014 has seen the formal employment share fall or stay flat. The cumulative drop is from 13.0% to 10.9% — a 16% decline in the share. India added ~8 million gig workers and lost relative formal jobs in the same period.

This is the most-consistent multi-year trend in the entire labour-market dataset.

Explore this in the live data →

About this reading

This is one of 36 standing analyses drawn from the Some Perspective dataset. It is not dated commentary: it describes a relationship in the data that holds across the series, and it is regenerated whenever the underlying dataset is refreshed. The figures quoted here reflect the 2026-08-15 data vintage.

← The post-2017 formal employment drop is visible …  ·  India's 5.1% unemployment rate is unusually low … →

Raman, V.S. Some Perspective: India's Economic Transformation. someperspective.info · CC BY 4.0 · data vintage 2026-08-15. Cite & download · All analyses