An active labour market takes shape beneath the surface

The latest labour-market data shows activity rising across several fronts, contradicting the notion of a softening jobs environment.

India’s labour market is usually described in binaries: too few jobs, too much churn, structural mismatch, and so on. But data from Thurro’s platform shows that three key indicators of employment activity—Naukri job listings, Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) flows, and Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) metrics—present a more nuanced picture.

Read together, they provide a consistent signal: employer activity, formal labour absorption, and workforce participation all rose through 2025. The magnitude is uncertain, but the direction is clear.

Job listings across the top 100 cities rose steadily from mid-2024, reaching a peak in November 2025

Job listings increased through 2025, with every month showing positive year-on-year growth. Total listings peaked in November at 779,951. The strongest surge came between February and May, when growth ranged between around 40% and 56% year-on-year, before stabilising at elevated levels in the second half, except October. A further breakdown of this data reveals several other insights.

The non-information technology/software segment showed stronger growth momentum compared with the IT/software segment. Non-IT roles accounted for 62–64% of all postings across the year. The largest single increase was a 95% year-on-year rise in May. Growth was broad across architecture, accounting, media, advertising, education, agriculture, hotels, and real estate, with sectoral gains between 40% and 82%.

Non-IT job postings show a clear upward trend through 2024 and 2025

IT/software job listings recovered gradually through 2024 and climbed further in 2025, though at a more moderate pace than non-IT segments

Cities such as Gandhinagar, Dadra & Nagar Haveli/Daman & Diu, Aurangabad, Rajkot, Jammu, Bareilly, Surat, Raipur, and Tiruchirapalli posted year-on-year growth of 30–56%. These cities overlap with regions showing strong EPFO formalisation, reinforcing a pattern of labour-market activity outside traditional metro hubs.

The IT/software segment maintained a relatively stable share of job listings. The distribution within IT—40% entry-level, 40% mid-level, and 20% senior—was consistent through the year.

The broader labour-market environment shows parallel shifts, as visible in EPFO data and PLFS findings. EPFO additions remained elevated through the year, with net additions of 12.3 million subscribers between January and July 2025—the latest month for which data is available. Viewed over a longer period, two clear trends emerge:

• younger workers (18–25) continue entering formal work in large numbers
• mid-career and older cohorts (29–35, 35+) are formalising at higher levels than in previous years

These flows indicate stronger movement into PF-linked employment. We have written about the EPFO numbers in detail here.

Read more: India’s labour market is formalising faster

PLFS indicators offer additional context. Labour force participation remained stable at roughly 50–51% through 2024 and 2025. Unemployment fluctuated between 6.3% and 7.2% during the same period, without showing signs of sharp deterioration. Monthly PLFS values can be volatile, but the broader pattern suggests that the workforce stayed engaged at a time when employer postings and formal labour absorption were increasing.

The unemployment rate has remained broadly stable between 6–7% since 2023

Across Naukri, EPFO, and PLFS, three consistent signals appear:

• employer activity increased, especially in non-IT sectors and non-metro regions
• formalisation continued across age cohorts
• workforce participation remained steady

Each dataset measures different aspects of labour-market activity, yet the signals move in a similar direction: more employer engagement, continued formal absorption, and a labour force that did not pull back. Employer demand increased through 2025, led by non-IT sectors and by regions outside the metros. EPFO additions show sustained formalisation across age groups. PLFS indicators do not show sharp withdrawals from the labour force. Taken together, these trends point to a labour market that is active and evolving.

There are, however, material limitations. For example, job-listing data does not reveal how many new jobs were created. These postings may include duplicates or refreshed roles. These datasets do not capture wages, hours worked, or job quality. These gaps mean the available evidence should be interpreted as a measure of labour-market activity and not as a count of net employment gains.

The combined readings from these datasets suggest movement rather than stasis. Data points to a labour market that is adjusting in multiple dimensions at once—through rising employer activity, continued movement into formal structures, and steady workforce participation. The evidence does not quantify job creation, but it does indicate that labour-market activity is widening across sectors, extending beyond traditional metros, and engaging workers across age groups. The emerging picture is of a labour market in transition, marked by uneven yet persistent shifts that traditional metrics alone may not fully capture.

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We analysed these job listing trends alongside EPFO and PLFS metrics on Thurro Answers to reveal why the labour market is more active than it appears. View the Notebook.