Is Uttar Pradesh stuck with low women's participation in its labour force?
The state of Uttar Pradesh is deceptively large. Working-age women (20-59 years) in the state—about 57 million in 2021—outnumber the entire population of countries like Canada, Australia, Malaysia, and South Korea. The state has more women aged 20-29 than the combined population of Norway, Finland and Denmark.
Given the vast size of UP, it makes sense to look at the state separately from the rest of India in the ongoing debate around low women’s employment. Data from the Periodic Labour Force Survey shows that in 2022-23, only about 19.8% of young adult women (20-29 years) in UP were either employed or looking for work—known as the labour force participation rate (LFPR)—compared to 33.2% in the rest of India. In urban UP, only 16.3% of young adult women were labour-force participants, while in the rest of urban India, the proportion was close to 30%.
This gap is worrisome, since UP is a young state demographically. In 2021, around 37% of working-age women were in the young adult category, compared to only 31% in the rest of India. Similarly, the proportion of teenagers set to enter the working-age population over this decade is larger in UP.
India’s average total fertility rate (TFR) being 2, UP’s TFR at 2.4 is still above the replacement rate of 2.1, according to the latest National Family Health Survey. The TFR indicates the number of children per woman of childbearing age. So, UP will witness a demographic expansion for longer than relatively prosperous states like Tamil Nadu and Gujarat.
In the age group of 30-59, the gap in women’s LFPR between UP and the rest of India is narrower. However, in urban UP, women’s LFPR in this age group at 17.4% in 2022-23 was only about half of that across the rest of India. UP is
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