India's unemployment rate (UR) for persons aged 15 years and above declined to 5.1% in July 2026, from 5.5% in June 2026, as both labour force participation and worker population ratios improved, according to the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) Monthly Bulletin released by the National Statistics Office (NSO), Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, on Monday.
The rural UR fell sharply to 4.5% in July from 5.0% in June, while the urban UR was nearly steady at 6.7%, against 6.6% a month earlier. Compared with July 2025, the overall and rural UR remained broadly stable, while the urban UR fell 0.5 percentage points from 7.2%.
