Data / Work / Where no one counts: SCs in private employment

Methods and sources

Where no one counts: SCs in private employment

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What this shows

What official surveys and censuses, in which people state their own caste, show about SC workers’ kind of work, the employers of SC salaried workers and their pay, and SC ownership of enterprises, and what listed companies are asked to report.

What it does not show: How many SCs hold private-sector jobs, or what they earn: no published table splits private from government work, or gives earnings, by social group, and companies report no caste.

Sources

  • Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), National Statistics Office, Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) Annual Report 2023-24 (July 2023 to June 2024), Table (46), pp. A-330 to A-331; Statement 10. Primary source.
  • Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), National Statistics Office, Additional Tables of the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) Annual Report 2022-23 (July 2022 to June 2023), Table (14), pp. A-175 to A-176. Primary source.
  • Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), National Statistics Office, Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) July 2023 to June 2024, unit-level data (first visit), as estimated by The Dalit Project, Files hhv1 and perv1 (first visit), as laid out in Data_LayoutPLFS_2023-24. Primary source.
  • National Sample Survey Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), NSS Report No. 563, Employment and Unemployment Situation among Social Groups in India, NSS 68th round (July 2011 to June 2012), Statement 3.19, pp. 44 to 45. Primary source.
  • Central Statistics Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), All India Report of Sixth Economic Census (2013-14), Chapter II, Table 2.1, p. 20; Section 2.6, pp. 27 to 28. Primary source.
  • Central Statistics Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), All India Report of Sixth Economic Census (2013-14), Chapter III, Table 3.5, p. 40. Primary source.
  • Central Statistics Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), All India Report of Sixth Economic Census (2013-14), Chapter IV, Table 4.8, p. 76. Primary source.
  • Central Statistics Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), All India Report of Fifth Economic Census (2005), Chapter 2, Table 2.6, p. 18. Primary source.
  • National Sample Survey Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), NSS Report No. 581, Operational Characteristics of Unincorporated Non-Agricultural Enterprises (Excluding Construction) in India, NSS 73rd round (July 2015 to June 2016), Statement 15.0, p. 68. Primary source.
  • Office of the Development Commissioner (MSME), Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, Udyam Registration Publication 2020-22 (up to March 2022), Table 7, p. 16. Primary source.
  • Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Education, All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2023-24, Final Report, Table 30(a). Primary source.
  • Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India, Ministry of Home Affairs, Census of India 2011, Release of Data Highlights: Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST), 30 April 2013, Proportion of SC/ST Population, India – 2001, 2011, dated 30 Apr 2013. Primary source.
  • Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), Business Responsibility and Sustainability Report format, Annexure I to circular SEBI/HO/CFD/CMD-2/P/CIR/2021/562 of 10 May 2021, Section A, items 18 to 20, dated 10 May 2021. Primary source.

Analysis by The Dalit Project, as on 11 Oct 2026.

Read these with the numbers

  • No published table splits private from government employment, or gives earnings, by social group. The four exhibits that do are our own estimates from PLFS 2023-24 unit-level data, marked as such, each with its sample; they are not MoSPI figures.
  • Survey estimates carry sampling error: the margins given are 95% intervals, and a gap smaller than the two margins together may be chance. PLFS counts workers by their usual status; it does not observe hiring, so a gap in who holds which jobs is a description, not a measure of how employers hire.
  • PLFS 2025 (January to December), released 27 March 2026, has no table of status in employment by social group, so 2023-24 is the latest round shown. PLFS 2025 also changed the sample design.
  • PLFS and NSS take the social group of the household head, as the household reports it, for every member.
  • The SC share of the population is from Census 2011 (16.6%), the latest count, and is stale; the next Census will replace it.
  • The Seventh Economic Census (2019-21) has no published all-India report, so the Sixth (2013-14) is the latest count of establishments by the owner’s social group.
  • Udyam counts only MSMEs that registered, and recorded the owner’s social category only from 1 July 2020; registrations before that are ‘Unidentified’.
  • The Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises (ASUSE) 2022-23 and 2023-24 tabulate the owner’s social group, but their reports could not be opened for this version.

Key terms

SC, ST, OBC, Others
Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes, and everyone else, as the surveys label them. The household or owner states the group.
Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS)
The National Statistics Office’s survey of work and employment, with an annual report each year since 2017-18.
Usual status (principal and subsidiary)
PLFS’s measure over the 365 days before the survey: people who worked or sought work for a relatively long part of them, and others who worked at least 30 days.
Regular wage or salaried
In PLFS’s words, people who worked in others’ farm or non-farm enterprises and “received salary or wages on a regular basis (i.e. not on the basis of daily or periodic renewal of work contract)”, in government or private work alike.
Casual labour
In PLFS’s words, a person “casually engaged in others’ farm or non-farm enterprises” who received wages “according to the terms of the daily or periodic work contract”.
Proprietary establishment
An establishment owned by one person; the Economic Census records the owner’s social group only for these.
MSME, Udyam
Micro, small and medium enterprises. Udyam is the Ministry of MSME’s registration portal; it recorded the owner’s social category from 1 July 2020, a month after it opened.
BRSR
Business Responsibility and Sustainability Report, the report format SEBI prescribed for listed companies in May 2021.

Changelog and corrections

Version 1.0: First version: PLFS 2022-23 and 2023-24, NSS 2011-12 and 2015-16, Sixth Economic Census, Udyam to March 2022, SEBI BRSR format (2021).

How corrections work. Every change is listed here.

Cite this

The Dalit Project, “Where no one counts: SCs in private employment”, version 1.0, data.dalitproject.org/private-employment/, as on 11 Oct 2026.