Low growth in job creation in India has pushed people to take up self-employment and unpaid family labour while the real wage of workers has stagnated in the past five years, a report released by a civil society group has said.

The report, Employment, Wages and Inequality, released recently by Bahutva Karnataka, a body working for justice, harmony and constitutional values, found that women working as unpaid household helpers have risen from one in four to one in three in this period. Many have been forced to join the profession in the face of hunger or death, the report said.

The United Nations labour arm, the International Labour Organisation (ILO), describes Unpaid Family Labour (UFL) as contributing family workers. Such workers assist a family member in either a market-oriented enterprise or in the job performed by the family member but do not receive regular payments, such as a wage or salary, in return for the work.

They may receive irregular payments in cash or benefits in kind through family or intra-household transfers derived from the profits of the enterprise. Such workers do not make the most important decisions affecting the enterprise. The ILO does not consider UFL as employment. Mainly women members of the family helping in farming or family enterprises come under UFL in India.

The report's findings are in sharp contrast to the Niti Aayog’s claim of a decline in poverty to below 5 per cent in 2022-23 from 22 per cent in 2011-12.

The report was compiled by collating data from the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) and the now-discontinued Employment-Unemployment Survey.

While the BJP had promised to create two crore jobs a year before it came to power in 2014, the report said 42 per cent of graduates under the age of 25 were unemployed in 2022-23.

Rajendran Narayanan, an academic and one of the authors of the report, said a State of Working India report of an institution he had been associated with also found a high level of unemployment among graduates in the previous year.

Between 2011-12 and 2022-23, the share of the self-employed in the workforce has risen. In 2011-12, 51.5 per cent of males and 56.5 per cent of females in the workforce were self-employed — which has increased to 53.4 per cent and 64.3 per cent, respectively.

“Stagnant household earnings among the poor force more women to work even as unpaid helpers such as working without earnings in family farms or small shops because they cannot find any other remunerative employment,” the report said.