New Delhi, April 15 -- Many informal migrants who had returned to their villages during the covid lockdowns stayed back after the pandemic ended, which led to an increased share of India's employed population working on farms. Disrupted supplies of affordable cooking gas in wake of the Iran conflict have restarted a slow but worrying reverse migration of informal workers to villages. As a direct result, rural labour markets may soon see wages depressed by a supply increase.

Official Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data has captured the impact of the post-covid reverse migration. Of the 83 million jobs added between 2021-22 and 2023-24, 40 million have been in agriculture. The number of women in own-account self-employment has seen a ...