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.

The report says that workers in India do not get minimum wages based on their skills. A large section of workers, especially casual workers, are not being paid minimum wages. At the national level, especially in the agricultural sector, 40.8 per cent of regular workers and 51.9 per cent of casual workers are not getting the minimum wage fixed for an unskilled worker in that sector.

In addition, the report includes a mention of the wages of workers in the construction industry. 39.3% of regular employees and 69.5% of temporary workers in this industry do not receive the minimum wage for unskilled workers per day on average. These numbers are derived from the 2022 Periodic Labour Force Survey.

The earnings of a sizable portion of the workforce who work for themselves have also decreased. Every year, their actual earnings have decreased by 0.8%. The monthly amount declined from approximately Rs 7,017 in 2019 to Rs 6,843 in 2022.