Monthly earnings of regular salary earners are decreasing, income has reduced from Rs 12,100 to Rs 10,925 in 12 years

According to the new report ‘India Employment Report 2024’ by the International Organization (ILO) and the Institute for Human Development (IHD), the real earnings of regular wage earners and self-employed people in India have declined over the last decade. In this report based on government data, actual earnings have been estimated based on inflation.

According to the report, there has been a continuous decline in the average monthly real earnings of regular employees year after year. The average monthly earnings of regular employees in 2012 was Rs 12,100. Now it has declined by 1.2 percent annually to Rs 11,155 per month in 2019. In 2022, it declined by 0.7 per cent to Rs 10,925 monthly.

According to the report, the opposite situation has emerged in the case of casual workers. That is, there has been an increase in their real earnings during the last decade. Their average monthly real income was Rs 3,701 in 2012, which increased by 2.4 per cent annually to Rs 4,364 in 2019 and Rs 4,712 per month in 2022. The decline in earnings of regular employees and the self-employed, coupled with the increase in earnings of contingent workers, means that the quality of jobs created between 2000 and 2022 did not measure up.