To understand whether working long hours is a nationwide phenomenon, The Secretariat studied the numbers that the government has come out with in its recently published annual report of Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) (July 2023 – June 2024) on September 23, 2024.

Rather than indicating a rise in India-wide toxic corporate work culture, the latest PLFS data supports evidence of relatively longer work hours by formal sector workers and by implication, shrinking work opportunities in the country’s informal sector.

PLFS gives data under three categories of workers – self-employed, regular wage/salaried employees, and casual labour for rural and urban areas.

Are Corporate Employees Working More Hours?

If all total figures for India are considered, then salaried employees (or formal workers) indeed spent more time working in a week than the other two categories.

In the July-September 2023 quarter, salaried employees worked 49.6 hours a week, compared to 40.8 and 40.7 hours for self-employed and casual labour respectively in every week.

In contrast, the April-June quarter of 2024 saw the working hours of salaried employees, self-employed and casual labour falling slightly to 48.2, 39.6 and 39.7 hours in a week, respectively.

So, the statistics clearly show that the salaried formal workers are putting in more hours in a week than the self-employed and casual workers.

Earlier this September, the mother of a 26-year-old E&Y employee wrote an e-mail to the consultancy firm’s India chairman immediately after her daughter's untimely death. She attributed her daughter’s death to “the work stress due to glorification of overwork culture,” and that e-mail immediately went viral on social media – sparking debates on toxic work culture and work-life balance.

So, when the PLFS working hours data came out, the popular commentariat started linking it up with the work culture faced by salaried corporate employees.

But how far is this comparison or interpretation of PLFS data valid? Is this interpretation a bit overstretched?

Working Hour Data Points More Towards Shrinking Informal Employment

The PLFS dataset also divulges that regular salaried employees worked six days a week on average in the July-September 2023 quarter, compared to 6.3 days for self-employed and 5.3 days for casual labour.

In the April-June 2024 quarter, these weekly working days slightly dropped to 5.9 days for salaried employees and 6.2 days for the self-employed. However, an average casual labourer worked the same 5.3 days in a week.

So, the salaried employees work roughly six days a week and eight hours a day throughout all four quarters. This implies relative stability of work hours and job security, rather than work stress.

Given the scorching summer during the April-June period this year, another interpretation of falling work hours – particularly for casual labour – can be the non-availability of daily-wage temporary work.

Therefore, it may not be illogical to link this set of data with the weekly working hours and then interpret it as a sign of shrinking work opportunities in the informal sector of the economy. That is another plausible explanation for the shrinking work hours of informal workers and the self-employed.

Rural-Urban Distinction In Working Hour Patterns

There is also a rural-urban distinction in weekly working hour patterns. For the salaried workers, the working hours in a week remain roughly around 48 hours in both rural and urban areas. The working hours marginally increase during the festive season and year-end.

Similarly, the average weekly working hours for casual labourers remain roughly around 40 hours. Once again, it increases slightly during harvesting season in rural areas and during summer in urban areas.

However, the biggest difference across rural and urban areas is in the working hour pattern of the self-employed. In the July-September quarter of 2023 (which is just before the festive season), the average urban self-employed worked the most – 48.2 hours a week.

The rural self-employed, on the other hand, worked the highest 39.5 hours a week in the harvest season corresponding to the October-December 2023 quarter.

The relatively low amount of weekly working hours for the rural self-employed also signifies the seasonality of work in rural areas. It is also common knowledge that quite a few people in the rural population do not want to be marked as unemployed. Often these people also consider working on family-owned land as employment, leading to the ‘disguised unemployment’ phenomenon.

Refusal to mark oneself as unemployed due to social or cultural shame is also prevalent in urban areas. But the extent of it is larger in rural areas.

According to the Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises 2021-22 and 2022-23, the informal sector’s contribution to national income has dropped. Between 2015-16 and 2022-23, informal businesses with hired workers declined. The net impact of this decline has also found reflection in informal employment figures.

The total number of workers in the unorganised sector went down from 111.3 million in 2015-16 to 110 million in 2022-23. These workers represent almost half of all the non-farm, non-construction workers in the Indian economy.

Statistics about these workers are reflected in the PLFS working hour figures. Thus, rather than linking it up with corporate work culture the debate should be ideally concentrated on the shrinking work opportunities for the casual labourers in the informal sector.

Only then these statistics will have some meaningful impact on future policymaking.