New Delhi, Aug. 13 -- News reports often claim that India is experiencing jobless growth, validated by images and videos of thousands of youth queuing for a handful of jobs. These reports seen on TV screens or shared on social media seem drastically different when one looks at India's official headline unemployment rate-3.2% in 2023-24 and 5.6% in June 2025-leading to some level of disbelief in the statistics.

This is something that played out last month when a Reuters report, based on a poll of 50 independent economists, claimed that India's official statistics was "inaccurate". The government was quick to issue a rebuttal, reiterating the robustness of the Period Labour Force Survey (PLFS), which currently captures the labour market dy...