Where reservation applies: about 6 in 100 workers work for government, local bodies and public sector enterprises

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What this shows

Where reservation applies by rule, and how many people work where it can apply: about 6 in 100 workers in 2023-24, with Central Government, CPSE and bank staff over time, and the scheme workers the Government calls honorary.

What it does not show: How many posts are actually reserved: no source counts reserved posts across all employers, and State Government posts are not counted at all since 2012.

Sources

National Statistics Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India, Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) Annual Report 2017-18, Table (39). Primary source.
National Statistics Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India, Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) Annual Report 2018-19, Table (39). Primary source.
National Statistics Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India, Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) Annual Report 2019-20, Table (39) and Statement 13. Primary source.
National Statistics Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India, Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) Annual Report 2021-22, Table (39). Primary source.
National Statistics Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India, Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) Annual Report 2022-23, Table (22). Primary source.
National Statistics Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India, Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) Annual Report 2023-24, Table (35) and Statement 7. Primary source.
Pay Research Unit, Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, Brochure on Pay and Allowances of Central Government Civilian Employees 2000-01, Group-wise sanctioned posts and persons in position. Primary source.
Pay Research Unit, Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, Brochure on Pay and Allowances of Central Government Civilian Employees 2001-02, Group-wise sanctioned posts and persons in position. Primary source.
Pay Research Unit, Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, Brochure on Pay and Allowances of Central Government Civilian Employees 2002-03, Group-wise sanctioned posts and persons in position. Primary source.
Pay Research Unit, Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, Brochure on Pay and Allowances of Central Government Civilian Employees 2003-04, Group-wise sanctioned posts and persons in position. Primary source.
Pay Research Unit, Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, Brochure on Pay and Allowances of Central Government Civilian Employees 2004-05, Group-wise sanctioned posts and persons in position. Primary source.
Pay Research Unit, Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, Brochure on Pay and Allowances of Central Government Civilian Employees 2005-06, Group-wise sanctioned posts and persons in position. Primary source.
Pay Research Unit, Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, Brochure on Pay and Allowances of Central Government Civilian Employees 2006-07, Group-wise sanctioned posts and persons in position. Primary source.
Pay Research Unit, Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, Brochure on Pay and Allowances of Central Government Civilian Employees 2007-08, Group-wise sanctioned posts and persons in position. Primary source.
Pay Research Unit, Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, Brochure on Pay and Allowances of Central Government Civilian Employees 2008-09, Group-wise sanctioned posts and persons in position. Primary source.
Pay Research Unit, Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, Brochure on Pay and Allowances of Central Government Civilian Employees 2009-10, Group-wise sanctioned posts and persons in position. Primary source.
Pay Research Unit, Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, Brochure on Pay and Allowances of Central Government Civilian Employees 2010-11, Group-wise sanctioned posts and persons in position. Primary source.
Pay Research Unit, Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, Brochure on Pay and Allowances of Central Government Civilian Employees 2012-13, Group-wise sanctioned posts and persons in position. Primary source.
Pay Research Unit, Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, Annual Report on Pay and Allowances of Central Government Civilian Employees 2013-14, Group-wise sanctioned posts and persons in position. Primary source.
Pay Research Unit, Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, Annual Report on Pay and Allowances of Central Government Civilian Employees 2014-15, Group-wise sanctioned posts and persons in position. Primary source.
Pay Research Unit, Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, Annual Report on Pay and Allowances of Central Government Civilian Employees 2015-16, Group-wise sanctioned posts and persons in position. Primary source.
Pay Research Unit, Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, Annual Report on Pay and Allowances of Central Government Civilian Employees 2016-17, Group-wise sanctioned posts and persons in position. Primary source.
Pay Research Unit, Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, Annual Report on Pay and Allowances of Central Government Civilian Employees 2017-18, Group-wise sanctioned posts and persons in position. Primary source.
Pay Research Unit, Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, Annual Report on Pay and Allowances of Central Government Civilian Employees 2018-19, Group-wise sanctioned posts and persons in position. Primary source.
Pay Research Unit, Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, Annual Report on Pay and Allowances of Central Government Civilian Employees 2019-20, Group-wise sanctioned posts and persons in position. Primary source.
Pay Research Unit, Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, Annual Report on Pay and Allowances of Central Government Civilian Employees 2020-21, Group-wise sanctioned posts and persons in position. Primary source.
Pay Research Unit, Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, Annual Report on Pay and Allowances of Central Government Civilian Employees 2021-22, Group-wise sanctioned posts and persons in position. Primary source.
Pay Research Unit, Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, Annual Report on Pay and Allowances of Central Government Civilian Employees 2022-23, Group-wise sanctioned posts and persons in position. Primary source.
Pay Research Unit, Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, Annual Report on Pay and Allowances of Central Government Civilian Employees 2023-24, Group-wise sanctioned posts and persons in position. Primary source.
Reserve Bank of India, Handbook of Statistics on Indian Economy 2025-26, Table 46: Bank Group-Wise Distribution of Employees of Scheduled Commercial Banks, Table 46, dated 31 Jul 2026. Primary source.
Lok Sabha Secretariat, Lok Sabha Unstarred Question 3497, Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, “Employment Opportunities in PSUs”, dated 15 Dec 2011. Primary source.
Lok Sabha Secretariat, Lok Sabha Unstarred Question 98, Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, “Employment Opportunities in PSUs”, dated 24 Feb 2015. Primary source.
Rajya Sabha Secretariat, Rajya Sabha Unstarred Question 1511, Ministry of Finance, “Workers and employees in CPSEs”, dated 20 Dec 2022. Primary source.
Lok Sabha Secretariat, Lok Sabha Unstarred Question 577, Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, “Employment Generation in CPSEs”, dated 19 Dec 2017. Primary source.
Lok Sabha Secretariat, Lok Sabha Unstarred Question 2221, Ministry of Corporate Affairs, “Recruitments in PSUs”, dated 8 Mar 2021. Primary source.
Lok Sabha Secretariat, Lok Sabha Unstarred Question 2306, Ministry of Finance, “Vacancies in CPSEs”, dated 1 Aug 2022. Primary source.
Lok Sabha Secretariat, Lok Sabha Unstarred Question 2932, Ministry of Finance, “Job Vacancies in CPSEs”, dated 7 Aug 2023. Primary source.
Lok Sabha Secretariat, Lok Sabha Unstarred Question 2765, Ministry of Finance, “Reserved Posts in CPSUs”, dated 21 Mar 2022. Primary source.
Legislative Department, Ministry of Law and Justice, Government of India, The Constitution of India, as on 1 May 2024, dated 1 May 2024. Primary source.
Parliament of India, The Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act, 2006 (No. 5 of 2007), as enacted, dated 3 Jan 2007. Primary source.
Parliament of India, The Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Teachers’ Cadre) Act, 2019 (No. 10 of 2019), dated 9 Jul 2019. Primary source.
Department of Personnel and Training, Government of India, Office Memorandum No. 36036/3/2018-Estt.(Res.), 15 May 2018, on reservation in temporary appointments (as forwarded by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research), dated 15 May 2018. Primary source.
Lok Sabha Secretariat, Lok Sabha Unstarred Question 2679, Department of Personnel and Training, “Reservation in Government Departments and PSUs”, dated 7 Aug 2024. Primary source.
Lok Sabha Secretariat, Lok Sabha Unstarred Question 1428, Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, “Job Reservation for SCs, STs and OBCs in PSUs”, dated 11 Feb 2020. Primary source.
Lok Sabha Secretariat, Lok Sabha Unstarred Question 1349, Ministry of Finance, “Reservation for SC/ST in PSBs”, dated 6 Dec 2021. Primary source.
Rajya Sabha Secretariat, Rajya Sabha Unstarred Question 540, Department of Personnel and Training, “Reservation in contractual appointments”, dated 7 Feb 2019. Primary source.
Lok Sabha Secretariat, Lok Sabha Unstarred Question 639, Department of Personnel and Training, “Reservation for contractual workers”, dated 6 Feb 2019. Primary source.
Lok Sabha Secretariat, Lok Sabha Unstarred Question 2619, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, “Reservation in Jobs in Private Sector”, dated 16 Dec 2025. Primary source.
Lok Sabha Secretariat, Lok Sabha Unstarred Question 103, Ministry of Education, “Reservation in Private Universities”, dated 3 Feb 2025. Primary source.
Lok Sabha Secretariat, Lok Sabha Unstarred Question 3321, Department of Justice, “Social Diversity in Higher Judiciary”, dated 7 Aug 2026. Primary source.
Rajya Sabha Secretariat, Rajya Sabha Unstarred Question 965, Ministry of Defence, “Reservation policy in recruitment to armed forces”, dated 10 Dec 2008. Primary source.
Lok Sabha Secretariat, Lok Sabha Unstarred Question 345, Department of Personnel and Training, “Appointment through Lateral Entry”, dated 24 Jul 2024. Primary source.
Lok Sabha Secretariat, Lok Sabha Unstarred Question 2581, Department of Personnel and Training, “Reservation for EWS”, dated 10 Mar 2021. Primary source.
Lok Sabha Secretariat, Lok Sabha Unstarred Question 1786, Department of Personnel and Training, “Creamy layer”, dated 27 Jul 2022. Primary source.
Lok Sabha Secretariat, Lok Sabha Unstarred Question 4349, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, “Creamy layer”, dated 28 Mar 2017. Primary source.
Lok Sabha Secretariat, Lok Sabha Unstarred Question 1727, Department of Personnel and Training, “Creamy layer”, dated 3 Dec 2014. Primary source.
Lok Sabha Secretariat, Lok Sabha Unstarred Question 2695, Department of Personnel and Training, “Reservation for EWS”, dated 11 Dec 2024. Primary source.
Lok Sabha Secretariat, Lok Sabha Unstarred Question 3508, Ministry of Human Resource Development, “EWS quota in colleges”, dated 15 Jul 2019. Primary source.
Rajya Sabha Secretariat, Rajya Sabha Starred Question 147, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, “Engagement of ASHA workers”, dated 14 Mar 2023. Primary source.
Lok Sabha Secretariat, Lok Sabha Unstarred Question 2323, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, “Recognition of ASHAs as Formal Health Workers”, dated 13 Feb 2026. Primary source.
Rajya Sabha Secretariat, Rajya Sabha Unstarred Question 474, Ministry of Women and Child Development, “Anganwadi Workers and Helpers”, dated 22 Jul 2021. Primary source.
Lok Sabha Secretariat, Lok Sabha Unstarred Question 1995, Ministry of Women and Child Development, “Policy for Regular Appointment of Anganwadi Workers”, dated 6 Dec 2024. Primary source.
Rajya Sabha Secretariat, Rajya Sabha Starred Question 44, Ministry of Education, “Cook-cum-Helpers and kitchen facilities under PM POSHAN”, dated 23 Jul 2025. Primary source.
World Bank, Worldwide Bureaucracy Indicators, version 6, “Public sector employment, as a share of formal employment”, India, dated 24 Feb 2025. Secondary: our own count from reports.
World Bank, Worldwide Bureaucracy Indicators (WWBI 3.0): Codebook and Explanatory Note, dated 27 Jun 2023. Primary source.
Seventh Central Pay Commission, Government of India, Report of the Seventh Central Pay Commission, November 2015. Primary source.
National Statistics Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India, Periodic Labour Force Survey, July 2023 to June 2024, unit-level data (household shares worked out by The Dalit Project). Primary source.
National Statistics Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India, Household Consumption Expenditure Survey 2023-24, unit-level data (household shares worked out by The Dalit Project). Primary source.

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

Read these with the numbers

PLFS records who a worker works for only outside agriculture. Exhibit 1 counts none of the 46.1% of workers in agriculture as working for government, local bodies and public sector enterprises, though a few may be. On the same basis the share of all workers was 7.0% in 2017-18 and 5.7% in 2023-24.
“Government, local bodies and public sector enterprises” is PLFS’s one category; it cannot be split into Central, State and local government, or into regular and contract staff. Reservation applies only to some of this work: to regular posts filled by direct recruitment or promotion, not to contract or outsourced staff.
No official all-India count of State Government employees has been published since the Directorate General of Employment and Training’s series ended with 31 March 2012 (Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Statistical Year Book 2015, Table 32.1). State Government posts are where most public employment is, and they are not counted here.
The Central Government series has a gap at 1 March 2017 and changes its treatment of Union Territories, as Exhibit 3’s note says. The 2023-24 report’s summary still gives the figure for 1 March 2023; its own table, used here, gives 1 March 2024.
In the Pay Research Unit report for 2016-17, the group rows of sanctioned posts as on 1 March 2016 add up to 3,634,035, but the Total row prints 3,633,935; the printed total is used, and it matches the report’s own count of vacant posts.
The EWS test also excludes families with a flat or plot above a set size, which neither survey records. HCES records land owned, homestead included, where the test counts agricultural land; MoSPI collected land owned as auxiliary information and advises against using such items to estimate indicators, so the land row is a rough filter, not a finding of its own. The surveys count the household, not the EWS family (the applicant, parents, siblings and children under 18, and spouse), and social group is as the household reports it. The income line was set in 2019 and has not moved for prices since; the surveys are from 2023-24.
CPSE figures come from answers in Parliament, not from the Public Enterprises Survey’s tables, and the answers count different sets of enterprises in different years. One answer (Rajya Sabha Unstarred Question 1511, 20 December 2022) gives 9.22 lakh regular employees “as on 31.03.2022”, which disagrees with the 8.41 lakh in two other answers for that date; it is not used.
A privatised company’s staff leave the space where reservation applies, but no answer found gives the number of employees at the time of sale, so this page does not count them.

Key terms

Reservation: A share of posts, seats or places set aside for SCs, STs, OBCs or EWS, under Articles 15 and 16 of the Constitution and the rules made under them.
SC, ST, OBC, EWS: Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes and Economically Weaker Sections (families outside the other three groups below an income and asset limit).
PLFS: Periodic Labour Force Survey, the National Statistics Office’s household survey of work, run from July to June until 2023-24.
Usual status (ps+ss): PLFS’s count of workers by what they mostly did over the year (principal status), plus those who worked for at least 30 days in a subsidiary role.
CPSE: Central public sector enterprise: a company or corporation in which the Central Government holds more than half the shares.
Sanctioned post: A post the Government has created and funded; it may be filled or vacant.
Pay Research Unit: The unit of the Department of Expenditure that counts Central Government civilian employees and posts each year, as on 1 March.
Lateral entry: Appointment of people from outside the civil services to Joint Secretary, Director and Deputy Secretary posts, on contract or deputation, since 2018.
HCES: Household Consumption Expenditure Survey, the National Statistics Office’s survey of what households spend, run in 2022-23 and again in 2023-24.
Standard error: How far a survey share may stand from the share for all households because only a sample was asked; about two standard errors either side is the usual margin.
Creamy layer: OBC families above an income or wealth limit, whose members cannot claim OBC reservation.
Lakh: 100,000.

Changelog and corrections

Version 1: First version: PLFS 2017-18 to 2023-24; Pay Research Unit reports to 1 March 2024; RBI Handbook 2025-26; Parliament answers to 7 Aug 2026.

How corrections work. Every change is listed here.

Cite this

The Dalit Project, “Where reservation applies: about 6 in 100 workers work for government, local bodies and public sector enterprises”, version 1, data.dalitproject.org/where-reservation-applies/, as on 11 Oct 2026.