An Overview of the Indian Health Labor Markets

Araujo, Edson C.; Coelho, Bernardo D. P.; Sahadewo, Gumilang Aryo; Manchanda, Navneet Kaur; McPake, Barbara; Mahal, Ajay; Sripada, Lakshmi Murthy; Santhanakrishnan, Deepak; Bhatnagar, Aarushi

An Overview of the Indian Health Labor Markets

Autores

Araujo, Edson C.

Coelho, Bernardo D. P.

Sahadewo, Gumilang Aryo

Manchanda, Navneet Kaur

McPake, Barbara

Mahal, Ajay

Sripada, Lakshmi Murthy

Santhanakrishnan, Deepak

Bhatnagar, Aarushi

Editor

Washington, DC: World Bank

Descripción

This report presents a comprehensive analysis of India’s health labor markets using data from the Periodic Labor Force Survey, the country’s largest labor dataset. It updates estimates of the size, composition, and characteristics of the active health workforce and examines employment dynamics in the sector, including estimates of labor supply elasticities, job quality, and projections of workforce needs and demand. India’s health workforce comprises about 5 million active workers when considering only core occupations. Although workforce density remains below global, regional, and structural benchmarks, efforts to scale up training capacity have led to a 60 percent increase in the number of health workers since 2017. Despite this progress, persistent shortages remain in key medical specialties, and informality is still widespread, both in employment arrangements and training requirements. The workforce also remains concentrated in urban areas, although rural representation has improved, particularly among associate nurses and midwives. The health sector plays a vital role in providing quality employment, especially for women, accounting for 1.3 percent of the total workforce and 2 percent of female employment in the country. Medical training increases female labor force participation by 24.6 percentage points. However, challenges persist: a 30 percent gender pay gap and the disproportionate burden of household responsibilities continue to limit women’s participation, over one-third of women with undergraduate-level medical training are outside the labor force. Labor supply elasticity estimates suggest that wage increases alone do not significantly increase the working hours of health workers. This underscores the importance of compensation structure and non-pecuniary benefits, such as training opportunities, career advancement, housing, and access to childcare, healthcare, and maternity benefits, especially for female workers. While projections indicate India may need up to 10 million additional health workers by 2035 (depending on the benchmark), current trends suggest the supply-demand gap is gradually narrowing, largely due to major healthcare reforms. As India expands health coverage and mobilizes resources to fund healthcare services, more healthcare jobs will be needed to support progress toward universal health coverage.