NEW DELHI: People in India’s 46 million-plus cities are earning significantly more than their counterparts in other urban areas, a new report released by NSO showed Monday. In 2025, a self-employed worker in Delhi, Bengaluru, Patna, Ahmedabad, Surat and Mumbai, among others, earned an average Rs 30,858 a month — 34% higher than their counterparts in other urban areas of the country, said the report, which analysed data from NSO’s own periodic labour force survey (PLFS) and annual survey on unincorporated sector enterprises (ASUSE). Similarly, a regular salaried employee earned Rs 28,808 in a month, which is 10% higher, while casual labourers earned Rs 624 a day, compared with Rs 550. More than 55% of workers are engaged in regular salaried wage employment in these cities. Also, they had a higher share of workers engaged in public and private limited companies (24.3%) compared to urban India (17.2%). Other labour market indicators, like the unemployment rate (UR) and labour force participation rate (LFPR) also showed improvement in these urban agglomerations over the past decade. The UR in the large cities stood at 4.9% in 2025, as against 5.8% in 2021-22 and 7.9% in 2017- 18. LFPR which represents the share of people working or looking for work has also risen to 52.4% in 2025, compared with 47.7% in 2017-18, driven in part by a rise in female labour force participation to 27.2% from 19.8% over the same period. The unincorporated sector in these cities also exhibits higher productivity levels, employment generation potential and entrepreneurship. Kolkata, Surat, and Greater Hyderabad emerged as the leading centres of entrepreneurial activity, jointly accounting for more than 22% of the total estimated establishments across all million-plus cities. A similar concentration was observed in employment. The proportion of establishments employing at least one hired worker — referred to as Hired Worker Establishments (HWEs) — was higher in million-plus cities (24%) compared to other urban areas (19%).
