Work demand under rural job scheme rises for third month

Work demand under the government’s flagship rural employment scheme rose for a third successive month in January.

An unfavourable base, the return of farm labourers after the kharif harvest and growing participation of women in such unskilled jobs appear to have led to an increase in demand, according to experts. The base effect would continue to weigh on the pace of demand increase at least until October, they said.

About 27.12 million people demanded work in January under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), up 13.5% from a year earlier. The number of households that these workers represented touched 22.50 million, increasing 14.5% year-on-year.


Monthly work demand under the scheme had eased consistently between November 2023 and October 2024, as improved economic activity opened up more remunerative job prospects.

The relatively low base boosted the pace of increase in MGNREGS work demand in percentage terms from November 2024.

Moreover, with summer crops already harvested in various parts of the country, most farm workers were back in the labour market by January, an official said.

Between April 2024 and January this year, 256.89 million people from 205.48 million households sought work under the MGNREGS.

On a sequential basis, work demand from individuals and households in January increased 5.2% and 4.3%, respectively, from the previous month.

The data showed that until January in this fiscal, about 2.42 billion person-days have been generated through MGNREGS, against the projected 2.27 billion.

Rural consumption
In its recent monthly economic reports, the finance ministry underscored the “resilience” of rural demand amid a slowdown in urban consumption.

The growing participation of women in the MGNREGS work is probably boosting rural income, thus aiding consumption in hinterlands, said the official cited earlier.

The government expects economic growth to touch 6.4% in 2024-25, marking a turnaround after a lacklustre 6% expansion in the first half of the fiscal.

Chief economic advisor V Anantha Nageswaran last week called for a further push to the rural economy, highlighting it as one of the steps required to augment internal capacities for growth amid strong external headwinds.