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Problem

Limited Contributory Retirement Coverage for India's Informal Workforce

  • National

Most people who work in India do so outside any employer-linked or contributory pension arrangement, and will reach old age without a pension they have paid into. The share of the population aged 60 and over is projected to rise from 10.1 per cent in 2021 to 14.9 per cent in 2036, so the gap widens as the population ages. No single national percentage is stated here, deliberately. Formal employment, EPFO membership, subscription to the National Pension System or the Atal Pension Yojana, and "pension coverage" are different things measured by different bodies against different denominators; averaging them would produce a figure none of the sources supports. The Economic Survey states the position plainly enough without one: coverage remains modest relative to the size of the workforce.

This is the most specific entry on this branch of the catalogue. The evidence behind it is below.

Who is responsible

  • Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) · Regulatory bodyRegulates the National Pension System and the Atal Pension Yojana and runs the schemes aimed at informal and platform workers.
  • Ministry of Labour and Employment · Ministry or DepartmentResponsible for EPFO membership and for social security for unorganised workers.

Evidence and sources

  • Economic Survey 2025-26, Chapter 3 — performance of the pensions sector · Government documentParagraph 3.107 of the Survey states that India's pension system has expanded steadily, yet overall coverage remains modest relative to the size of the workforce, with persistent awareness gaps. Paragraph 3.99 projects the share of the population aged 60 and over rising from 10.1 per cent in 2021 to 14.9 per cent in 2036. The Survey states no national coverage percentage in this passage.
  • Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority — statements on workforce coverage (2025-26) · Official statementPFRDA has been reported as describing a working population of about 460 million against about 170 million with pension coverage. That is a comparison of subscriber counts rather than a like-for-like coverage rate, it reaches this entry through secondary reporting rather than a PFRDA publication, and it is not used as a statistic in the entry.
  • Mercer CFA Institute Global Pension Index, Supplementary Report 2025 — India · Research paper or studyThe Index assesses EPFO, NPS and APY together as covering under 25 per cent of the workforce on its own methodology, and grades India E for adequacy and D for sustainability. The report itself was not consulted, no permanent public link was available, and its workforce denominator is not known to match the PFRDA figures, so the two are not combined.

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