NSO Releases First District-Level Estimates of Unincorporated Sector

The National Statistics Office, which works under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, has released district-level estimates of the unincorporated non-agricultural sector. This is the first time the office has put out district-level estimates drawn from a large nationwide survey. The numbers come from the Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises for 2025, known as ASUSE 2025, and the report sits on the ministry website.

How wide the coverage is

Estimates are given for 757 of the 770 districts that were in the sampling frame when the survey sample was drawn. Lakshadweep and Chandigarh are left out of the district tables because each of them has only one district, so their district figures are the same as their union territory figures and were published earlier. Delhi is left out for a different reason. Its rural population is very small and it has few villages, so all its districts were merged into a single stratum and district estimates could not be produced.

Where the activity is concentrated

The top 10 districts are spread across four states, namely Gujarat, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. The top 50 are spread across twelve states. About 9 per cent of districts have fewer than 10,000 establishments each.

Productivity and women

• In about 331 districts, gross value added per worker lies between 1 lakh and 1.5 lakh rupees
• In 280 districts it is above the all-India average of Rs 1,56,539
• In 237 districts women make up one-third of the workforce of the unincorporated sector
• In 25 districts women are more than half of the workforce
• The districts with the highest share of women-led establishments lie in Telangana, Manipur and Meghalaya, and in Mizoram at least half the establishments in every district are owned by women

Why it matters

The survey covers rural and urban India and takes in manufacturing, trade and other services. Data were collected on tablets through computer assisted personal interviewing. The ministry had earlier published a profile of the unincorporated sector in the million-plus cities identified from the population figures of Census 2011. The district report carries those city estimates within the districts concerned. Sub-state figures of this kind help spot regional strengths and weak spots, which is what makes targeted policy possible.