First-ever All India Survey on Domestic workers

Recently, the Union Minister for Labour and Employment flagged off the first ever All India Survey on Domestic Workers (DW).

Context

Recently, the Union Minister for Labour and Employment flagged off the first ever All India Survey on Domestic Workers (DW).

The survey is being carried out by the Labour Bureau.
It is aimed at estimating the number of domestic workers at the national and State levels, those engaged in informal employment, and migrant and non-migrant workers; the proportion of domestic workers who stay at their employers’ homes and those who do not; the wages of such workers; and other socio-economic factors.
The survey would also include details of the number of households with “live-in and live-out” domestic workers and the average number of workers engaged by various kinds of households.
The survey would cover 37 States and Union Territories, covering 1.5 lakh households in 742 districts.
The survey for domestic workers is among five national jobs surveys that will be conducted periodically and provide crucial data for an upcoming national employment policy.
- The other four surveys are the All-India Survey of Migrant Workers, All-India Survey of Employment Generated by Professionals and All-India Survey of Employment Generated in the Transport Sector, All-India Quarterly Establishment-based Employment Survey (AQEES).

Any person engaged by a household shall be classified as a domestic worker if the frequency of visits by the worker to the household is at least four days during the last 30 days and the goods and/or services produced by the worker are consumed by the members of the household against payment either through cash or kind.

According to the latest data on the e-Shram portal, around 8.8% of the registered 8.56 crore informal sector workers fall in the category of domestic workers.
- At the current rate of registration in the e-shram portal, there would be 3-3.5 crore domestic workers in the country.
India has around 38 crore workers in the informal sector.
Domestic workers are the third-largest category of workers after agriculture and construction.
India is a signatory of the International Labour Organisation Convention C-189 (Domestic Workers Convention, 2011).