The factory workers’ protests in Noida have exposed the fragility of the economic situation of India’s manufacturing workforce. Some of the protesting workers are demanding little $A monthly salary of 20 lakhs should be a reality check for many Indians working in white collar jobs. How much does an average factory worker earn in India? Hizb ut Tahrir used data from India’s latest official labor market database, the Periodic Labor Force Survey 2025 (PLFS), to answer this question.
A monthly salary of $22,500 puts a salaried manufacturing worker in the top 20% of their peers
Twenty-five percent of workers in India are paid. Salaried workers in manufacturing represent 5.8% of workers in India. The average monthly income of a manufacturing worker is $18.735 which is less than $22,699 earned by the average wage worker across all industries in India. What is more telling is that the monthly income is only $22,500 places a salaried manufacturing worker in the top 20% of the nation’s highest-paid manufacturing workers. The threshold is much higher at $32,000 for all wage earners in the country. (See chart 1)
Not only are manufacturing workers underpaid, they are more likely to work without basic rights
Salary is the most important part of a paid job, but it is not the only part. Job quality also depends on whether workers have written contracts, paid leave, or Social Security contributions. PLFS data shows that manufacturing workers lag behind even on these counts. Only 16.5% of manufacturing workers had a written contract, and only one in five had some form of Social Security benefits and paid leave. Manufacturing performs poorly compared to all non-farm and non-construction sectors, with the exception of the broad trade and restaurant category. To be sure, Social Security, contracts, or paid leave are not important to about 44% of manufacturing workers because they are self-employed. However, this does not mean that self-employed manufacturing workers are better off, because self-employed manufacturing workers earn less than both the average self-employed person in India and a salaried manufacturing worker. (See chart 2)
Manufacturing becomes less beneficial as workers age
This is among the most alarming statistics for a worker who wants to work in manufacturing long-term. Average wages for salaried manufacturing workers are higher than the economy-wide average for workers aged 15 to 18 years. However, this advantage reverses and continues to reverse as one moves toward older groups of workers. For workers over 40, average wages in manufacturing are about 20% less than what the average salaried person in that age group earns. (See chart 3)
The rapid spread of contract labor has made matters worse for the average manufacturing worker
The Annual Survey of Industries (ASI), which covers the registered manufacturing sector, defines a contract worker as someone who works through a contractor (not necessarily through a written contract). One can assume that these workers are paid less than those who work directly in the factory and do not receive any benefits. ASI data shows that the share of such contract workers has more than doubled in India’s factories since the turn of the century: from 20% in 2000-01 to 42% in 2023-24. (See chart 4)
Certainly none of these circumstances would have sparked the current protests. Perhaps what played a role was the spark caused by the recent inflationary shock of things like cooking gas, combined with the pent-up anger of working under enormous financial pressure even before that.
