Female Labour Participation Hits 34.9% as Unemployment Eases

By: WE Staff | Thursday, 12 February 2026

• India's labor market has shown improvement in the October-December quarter of 2025
• The female labor force participation rate rose during the period
• Overall workforce participation also grew compared to the last quarter

India's labour market performed better during the October-Dec 2025 quarter as its labour force participation rate rose while its unemployment rate fell, data released by the government.

The overall LFPR of 15 years and above improved to 55.8 percent in the October-December 2025 quarter from 55.1 percent in the previous quarter. Rural LFPR rose to 58.4 percent, while the urban LFPR was retained.

This is according to the Quarterly Bulletin of the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) published by the National Statistics Office under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation.

Female labor force participation improved in the quarter: female LFPR increased to 34.9 percent from 33.7 percent in July–September 2025. This is attributed to an improvement in the labor force participation of rural females; the latter increased to 39.4 percent, having earlier been 37.5 percent.

The WPR for people above 15 years improved in the October to December quarter and recorded a WPR of 53.1 percent, against 52.2 percent in the previous quarter. This improvement in WPR was due to better engagement of the workforce in rural areas.

Unemployment rates decreased in rural and urban areas. In rural areas, the unemployment rate decreased to 4.0 percent from 4.4 percent in the previous quarter. In addition, the unemployment rate decreased to 6.7 percent from 6.9 percent in urban areas due to a decline in male unemployment.

In addition to that, the category of self-employment also registered a slight increase. In the rural sector, the percentage of self-employed people elevated to 63.2 percent from 62.8 percent, while in the urban sector, this percentage merely elevated up to 39.7 percent.

The agricultural sector still remained an important source of employment in rural areas, as 58.5 percent employment was found in rural areas as opposed to 57.7 percent employment in the previous quarter for the population of 15 years and above from October to December 2025.

The tertiary sector still remained the primary source of employment during this quarter in urban areas, employing a workforce of 61.9 percent.

The estimated number of employed individuals 15 years and above increased from 56.2 crore during July-September 2025 to 57.4 crore during October-December 2025. Out of the total employed individuals during the latest quarter, 40.2 crore were men and 17.2 crore were women.

The quarterly estimates are based on a survey that covers 561,108 persons in rural as well as urban India.

The revised version of PLFS, released in January 2025 to provide monthly and quarterly estimates for both rural and urban areas under the Current Weekly Status framework, still remains the major source of official employment and unemployment data in India.