New Draft Labour Policy Prioritizes Women's Employment & Security

By: WE staff | Thursday, 9 October 2025

• The Indian government published the draft labour policy on Wednesday
• It centers on boosting women's employment and delivering universal, portable social security
• It seeks to bring women's workforce participation to 35% by 2030

The draft labour policy presented by the government on Wednesday aims to increase women's labour share to 35 percent by 2030 and afford universal and portable social security, and push for more youth employment in entrepreneurship and career-centred initiatives.

A notable recommendation is the creation of a Universal Social Security Account that would consolidate EPFO, ESIC, PM-JAY, e-SHRAM, and state welfare boards, so that workers do not need to pursue separate paths to receive benefits, and all services to the worker would be performed in one location.

The objective of the Shram Shakti Niti 2025 is to integrate the Skill India Mission, National Apprenticeship Promotion Scheme, and the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana into a single skill-to-employment ecosystem, using the National Career Service-Digital Public Infrastructure (NCS-DPI) alongside Education to Employment Career Lounges industry-style.

The NCS-DPI is designed to connect talent to employment using the capabilities of open APIs, a multi-lingual platform, and AI-based tools, with a focus on smaller towns and cities and MSME clusters, making the solutions for employment support available as a single all-India public-good service.

For the industry, the policy proposes a single-window digital compliance framework to establish a quick compliance return filling service for MSME using self-certification.