Consider the following statements regarding Annual Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) report 2023–24 by the National Statistical Organization (NSO): 1. The agriculture sector remains dominant in employment, with its share rising from about 44 per cent in 2017–18 to about 46 per cent in 2023–24. 2. The share of female workers in agriculture has increased during the period 2017–18 to 2023–24. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

Q: What is the answer to CDS (II) 2025 GK Q79?

C. Correct — C, Both 1 and 2. Neither statement is a trap; both are the Economic Survey's own sentences with the decimals rounded off. Chapter 12 of the Economic Survey 2024-25 records that the agriculture sector remains dominant in employment, with its share rising from 44.1 per cent in 2017-18 to 46.1 per cent in 2023-24 — which is what the paper calls 'about 44 per cent' rising to 'about 46 per cent'. The same paragraph records that the share of female workers in agriculture increased significantly, from 57.0 per cent in 2017-18 to 64.4 per cent in 2023-24, while male participation in agriculture fell from 40.2 per cent to 36.3 per cent. The underlying survey agrees: Statement 7 of the Periodic Labour Force Survey Annual Report for 2023-24 gives agriculture's share of all workers, rural and urban together, as 45.5 per cent in 2021-22, 45.8 in 2022-23 and 46.1 in 2023-24, with the female share running 62.9, 64.3 and 64.4 over the same three years. What makes statement 1 feel wrong is the expectation every economics course installs — that a developing economy moves labour out of agriculture, not into it. India did that for decades and then reversed after 2018-19, with the reversal sharpest in the pandemic years when returning migrants and rural households fell back on the farm. The share has not returned to its old path since. (Provisional — pending the official UPSC key.)

(a)1 only
(b)2 only
(c)Both 1 and 2
(d)Neither 1 nor 2

Answer

Why

Correct — C, Both 1 and 2. Neither statement is a trap; both are the Economic Survey's own sentences with the decimals rounded off. Chapter 12 of the Economic Survey 2024-25 records that the agriculture sector remains dominant in employment, with its share rising from 44.1 per cent in 2017-18 to 46.1 per cent in 2023-24 — which is what the paper calls 'about 44 per cent' rising to 'about 46 per cent'. The same paragraph records that the share of female workers in agriculture increased significantly, from 57.0 per cent in 2017-18 to 64.4 per cent in 2023-24, while male participation in agriculture fell from 40.2 per cent to 36.3 per cent. The underlying survey agrees: Statement 7 of the Periodic Labour Force Survey Annual Report for 2023-24 gives agriculture's share of all workers, rural and urban together, as 45.5 per cent in 2021-22, 45.8 in 2022-23 and 46.1 in 2023-24, with the female share running 62.9, 64.3 and 64.4 over the same three years. What makes statement 1 feel wrong is the expectation every economics course installs — that a developing economy moves labour out of agriculture, not into it. India did that for decades and then reversed after 2018-19, with the reversal sharpest in the pandemic years when returning migrants and rural households fell back on the farm. The share has not returned to its old path since.

Why the others are wrong

(a)1 only — Drops the female-share statement, which is the better-documented half of the pair — 57.0 per cent in 2017-18 to 64.4 per cent in 2023-24, a rise of more than seven percentage points.
(b)2 only — Rejects statement 1 on the strength of the textbook expectation that agriculture's employment share must keep falling. The Economic Survey's own sentence says it rose from 44.1 to 46.1 per cent, and the survey behind it puts 2023-24 at 46.1.
(d)Neither 1 nor 2 — Rejects both sentences of a paragraph that the paper has quoted almost verbatim. Nothing in the published series supports a fall on either measure over this period.

Concept

The Periodic Labour Force Survey replaced the old quinquennial employment rounds in 2017-18 and now reports every year, which is why 2017-18 is the natural base for any comparison of this kind. Its usual-status measure counts a person by what they did for the major part of the year, with a subsidiary activity of thirty days or more added on. The industry-of-work tables from that measure are what give agriculture's share of all workers. Between 2017-18 and 2023-24 that share moved from 44.1 per cent to 46.1 per cent, manufacturing slipped from 12.1 to 11.4 per cent and services from 31.1 to 29.7 per cent — a pattern economists call structural retrogression, because labour moved back toward the sector that development is supposed to move it away from.

The whole difficulty of this item is that statement 1 contradicts a rule of thumb rather than a fact. Candidates are taught that the share of the workforce in agriculture declines as an economy develops, and in India it did decline steadily until about 2018-19. The reversal after that is documented in the government's own flagship publications, and the sharpest single driver is the rise in rural female workforce participation: rural female labour-force participation for those aged 15 and above rose from 36.6 per cent in 2021-22 to 47.6 per cent in 2023-24, and most of that additional work is on the farm, much of it as unpaid help in a household enterprise. That is why the female share in agriculture climbed faster than the overall share. The safe habit for any statement quoting a figure from a named report is to ask whether the sentence sounds like the report's own prose — and here both statements do, because both are.

Key facts

Agriculture's share of employment rose from 44.1 per cent in 2017-18 to 46.1 per cent in 2023-24, per the Economic Survey 2024-25.
The female share of workers in agriculture rose from 57.0 per cent to 64.4 per cent over the same period, while the male share fell from 40.2 to 36.3 per cent.
The Periodic Labour Force Survey's own Statement 7 gives agriculture's share for rural and urban persons combined as 45.5, 45.8 and 46.1 per cent in 2021-22, 2022-23 and 2023-24.
Manufacturing's share fell from 12.1 to 11.4 per cent and services from 31.1 to 29.7 per cent between 2017-18 and 2023-24.
Rural female labour-force participation for age 15 and above rose from 36.6 per cent in 2021-22 to 47.6 per cent in 2023-24 — the main force behind the rising female share in agriculture.

Study next

The Periodic Labour Force Survey — usual status, current weekly status and current daily status, and why the three give different ratesStructural transformation and structural retrogression, and where India's employment shares sit against the classic patternRural female labour-force participation since 2017-18 and the debate over how much of it is distress workDisguised unemployment and the measurement problem of the unpaid helper in a household enterpriseEmployment chapters of the Economic Survey, and how to read a share against an absolute number

Common traps

Rejecting a figure because it contradicts the textbook expectation that agriculture's employment share always falls. In India it rose after 2018-19.
Confusing agriculture's share of employment, about 46 per cent, with its share of gross value added, which is far smaller — the gap is the point of the sector's low productivity.
Looking for the combined 44.1 per cent figure in the 2017-18 survey report itself; that report prints only the rural and urban by male and female cells, so the Economic Survey is the source that states the pair.

As a two-statement item quoting a share and its direction of movement from a named official report, where one statement usually contradicts a standard expectation.

Related PYQs

UPSC_2020_GS1_Q582020Open & attempt →

With reference to the Indian economy after the 1991 economic liberalization, consider the following statements: 1. Worker productivity (per worker at 2004-05 prices) increased in urban areas while it decreased in rural areas. 2. The percentage share of rural areas in the workforce steadily increased. 3. In rural areas, the growth in non-farm economy increased. 4. The growth rate in rural employment decreased. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

(a) 1 and 2 only
(b) 3 and 4 only
(c) 3 only
(d) 1, 2 and 4 only

Answer(b) 3 and 4 only

The same subject one period earlier, and the same demand — to know the actual direction of a workforce share rather than to guess it. That item is decided by the rural non-farm economy growing while rural employment growth slowed, which is the phase that preceded the post-2018 return to the farm.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
According to the Economic Survey 2024-25, the share of the agriculture sector in India's employment between 2017-18 and 2023-24
- (a)rose from about 44 per cent to about 46 per cent
- (b)fell from about 46 per cent to about 44 per cent
- (c)remained unchanged at about 50 per cent
- (d)fell below 40 per cent for the first time
Answer(a) rose from about 44 per cent to about 46 per cent — 44.1 to 46.1 per cent, a reversal of the long decline that had run until about 2018-19.
practice — not a real PYQ
The Periodic Labour Force Survey, which produces India's annual employment estimates, is conducted by which one of the following?
- (a)The Reserve Bank of India
- (b)The National Statistical Office under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation
- (c)The Ministry of Labour and Employment's Labour Bureau
- (d)NITI Aayog
Answer(b) The National Statistical Office under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation — it began in 2017-18 and replaced the quinquennial employment and unemployment rounds.