Why in News?

• For the first time, the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) has released district-level estimates on the informal economy, drawing on the Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises (ASUSE), 2025.
• The data covers the unincorporated non-agricultural sector—broadly, establishments engaged in manufacturing, trade and other services.
• The district-level estimates provide a more granular picture of women’s participation, wages, enterprise ownership and the geographical concentration of informal economic activity, which can help improve evidence-based policymaking.

What’s in Today’s Article?

• Women’s Share in Informal Work
• The Pay Divide
• Women’s Enterprise Ownership
• Economic Activity Is Highly Concentrated
• Significance for Policy
• Conclusion

Women’s Share in Informal Work:

• The data reveals a striking geographical divide in women’s participation among informal workers.
  • Highest women’s participation: Nirmal, Telangana (78% of all its informal workers are women); Imphal East, Manipur (70%); Nizamabad, Telangana (70%); Jagtial, Telangana (69%); and Bishnupur, Manipur (66%).
  • Lowest women’s participation: Srinagar, J&K (11%); Hathras, Uttar Pradesh (11%); Banaskantha, Gujarat (11%); Marigaon, Assam (9%); and Rudraprayag, Uttarakhand (7%).
• All the top 10 districts for women’s share are located in eastern or northeastern 22 of the 25 districts with the highest female participation are from the region, with the remaining three in Jharkhand and Odisha.
• At the other end, Rudraprayag records just 7%. The all-India average is around 29%, while women constitute at least one-third of the informal workforce in 237 districts.
• Telangana’s presence among the leading districts also highlights the importance of state- and district-specific socio-economic factors.

The Pay Divide:

• High female participation does not necessarily translate into uniformly higher earnings.
• Among districts where women constitute at least half of the informal workforce, South West Khasi Hills, Meghalaya, is identified as the best-paying district.
• Here, annual emoluments per hired worker is around ₹1.71 lakh, compared with an all-India average of about ₹1.3 lakh.
• This underlines the need to examine both participation and the quality of employment, including remuneration, productivity and access to better economic opportunities.

Women’s Enterprise Ownership:

• The district-level data also reveals a strong relationship between women’s participation in the workforce and women’s ownership of enterprises.
• Districts with high female participation tend to have a high proportion of female-owned proprietary establishments.
• Nirmal, which tops the female workforce participation ranking, also has nearly 80% of proprietary establishments owned by women.
• This suggests that women’s economic participation in some regions is not confined to being workers; it also extends to entrepreneurship and ownership of informal enterprises.

Economic Activity Is Highly Concentrated:

• The distribution of informal economic activity is very different when measured by the absolute number of workers and establishments rather than women’s participation.
• North 24 Parganas, West Bengal has the largest number of informal workers—about 21.3 lakh—and around 16.6 lakh establishments.
• The top 10 districts by number of establishments account for around 11% of the total Gross Value Added (GVA) generated by the sector. The top 50 districts account for almost one-third of the sector’s GVA.
• Thus, while women’s participation is particularly high in several northeastern districts, the scale of informal economic activity is concentrated in a relatively smaller set of districts across India.

Significance for Policy:

• The findings highlight three interconnected policy concerns -
  • Women’s labour-force participation: High female representation in informal work needs to be converted into productive and remunerative employment.
  • Women-led entrepreneurship: High female ownership of proprietary enterprises can be leveraged through credit, skilling, digitalisation and market access.
  • Regional targeting: Large inter-district variations demonstrate the need for granular, locally tailored policies rather than one-size-fits-all interventions.
• Importance and challenges of the informal sector: It contributes significantly to employment, livelihoods and economic activity, while often operating outside the institutional protections available to formal workers.
• Why district-level data matters?
• The report covers 757 districts, although geographical coverage can vary because of administrative changes, including the creation of new districts and changes in district boundaries.
• District-level data can help identify districts requiring focused measures for women’s employment, skilling, entrepreneurship, credit access and social protection.

Conclusion:

• The first district-level estimates of the informal economy provide an important statistical foundation for understanding India’s gendered and geographically uneven informal economy.
• Better granular statistics can strengthen cooperative and competitive federalism, outcome-based governance and evidence-based policymaking, particularly for achieving women-led development and inclusive growth.