Protests by factory workers in Noida have laid bare the economic precarity of India’s manufacturing workforce. That some of the protesting workers are asking for as little as ₹20,000 per month in salary must be a reality check for many Indians in white-collar jobs. How much does an average factory worker earn in India? HT has used data from India’s latest official labour market database, the 2025 Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) to answer this question.
A monthly salary of ₹22,500 puts a manufacturing salaried worker in the top-20% of their peers
Twenty-five percent of India’s workers are salaried. Manufacturing salaried workers account for 5.8% of India’s workers. Average monthly income for a salaried manufacturing worker is ₹18,735, which is less than the ₹22,699 earned by the average salaried worker across all industries in India. What is even more revealing is that a monthly income of just ₹22,500 places a salaried manufacturing worker in the top 20% of highest-paid manufacturing workers in the country. The threshold is much higher at ₹32,000 for all salaried workers in the country.
Manufacturing workers aren’t just poorly paid, they are also more likely to work without basic rights
The paycheck is the most important part of a salaried job, but it is not the only one. Job quality also depends on whether workers have written contracts, paid leave, or social security contributions. PLFS data shows that manufacturing workers lag even on these counts. Only 16.5% of manufacturing workers had a written contract, and only about one in five had some form of social security benefits and paid leave. Manufacturing performs poorly compared to all non-agriculture, non-construction sectors, except the broad trade and restaurants category. To be sure, social security, contracts, or paid leave are irrelevant for 44% of manufacturing workers because they are self-employed. However, this does not mean that self-employed manufacturing workers are better off, because manufacturing workers who are self-employed earn less than both the average self-employed person in India and the salaried manufacturing worker.
{{/usCountry}}The paycheck is the most important part of a salaried job, but it is not the only one. Job quality also depends on whether workers have written contracts, paid leave, or social security contributions. PLFS data shows that manufacturing workers lag even on these counts. Only 16.5% of manufacturing workers had a written contract, and only about one in five had some form of social security benefits and paid leave. Manufacturing performs poorly compared to all non-agriculture, non-construction sectors, except the broad trade and restaurants category. To be sure, social security, contracts, or paid leave are irrelevant for 44% of manufacturing workers because they are self-employed. However, this does not mean that self-employed manufacturing workers are better off, because manufacturing workers who are self-employed earn less than both the average self-employed person in India and the salaried manufacturing worker.
{{/usCountry}}Manufacturing becomes less and less rewarding as workers age
This is among the most damning statistics for a worker who wants to make a long-term career in manufacturing. Average wages for salaried manufacturing workers are higher than the economy-wide average for the 15–18-year cohort of workers. However, this advantage reverses and continues to reverse as one moves toward older cohorts of workers. For workers above 40 years of age, average wages in manufacturing are almost 20% less than what the average salaried person in that age bracket earns.
A rapid proliferation of contract work has only made things worse for the average manufacturing worker
The Annual Survey of Industries (ASI), which covers the registered manufacturing sector, defines a contract worker as someone employed through a contractor (not necessarily through a written contract). One can assume that such workers are paid less than those employed directly by a factory and have no 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.
To be sure, none of these conditions might have triggered the current protests. What might have played a role is the spark provided by the recent inflationary shock for things such as cooking gas, combined with the pent-up anger from working under immense material strain even earlier.