When Work Cannot Promise Tomorrow: Daily Wage Earners Lead India’s Suicide Figures

Saleem Khan, a daily wage labourer, has been living in Noida for the last 25 years. He says the workload has increased, while wages have failed to keep pace with rising expenses.

“I get around ₹800 a day, but work itself is uncertain. Right now, I have been sitting at home for a week without work. I go out every day and return empty-handed. I can’t express in words the stress and pressure I am going through. Eid is around the corner, and I have neither money nor work,” he said.

For labourers like Saleem, whose earnings are already low and irregular, even a few missed days of work or delayed wages can immediately disrupt household expenses. Financial insecurity becomes a constant reality, creating prolonged stress and emotional pressure.

In 2024, more daily wage earners died by suicide in India than people from any other occupational group, according to the latest National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data. The figures have renewed attention on the pressures faced by workers surviving on unstable incomes.

The NCRB recorded 52,910 suicides among daily wage earners in 2024, accounting for 31 per cent of all suicides recorded that year.

The report also recorded 5,913 suicides among agricultural labourers, a category counted separately from daily wage workers. Taken together, daily wage earners and agricultural labourers accounted for more than one-third of all suicide victims in India.

The numbers place daily wage earners ahead of “housewives”, self-employed persons, salaried professionals, unemployed persons and students in the NCRB’s occupational break-up.

Employed, Yet Financially Insecure

Government's Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data for 2025 showed India’s unemployment rate declining from 3.3 per cent to 3.1 per cent. However, economists have repeatedly argued that employment figures alone fail to capture the quality and stability of work, particularly in an economy dominated by informal labour, casual work and self-employment.

Economist Santosh Mehrotra dismissed the reported decline in unemployment as statistically insignificant.

“You can’t take that seriously,” he said, arguing that such a marginal shift does not reflect any meaningful improvement in the lives of casual workers.

While the government often highlights controlled inflation, Mehrotra pointed out that the real wages of casual workers have remained stagnant for nearly a decade. If nominal wages rise only at the same pace as inflation, workers experience no real increase in purchasing power despite years of labour.

He also pointed to the growing pressure on India’s labour market due to migration back into low-productivity sectors such as agriculture.

This massive influx of labourers has contributed to a saturated labour market where, according to Mehrotra, “real wages are choking” because of oversupply. He noted that by 2019, nearly 42 per cent of the workforce was producing only 16 per cent of India’s GDP through agriculture. The addition of millions more workers to this already low-productivity sector has further weakened the bargaining power of the poor.

He further explained that migrant labourers remain particularly vulnerable because they often possess no assets or economic safety net in the cities where they seek work.

A 2026 SBI Research analysis of PLFS data found that nearly one in four informal workers in India earned below minimum wage levels. The findings highlight the gap between being employed and being economically secure.

Many of them work without written contracts, fixed salaries or guaranteed payments. Most depend on contractors or middlemen for work, leaving them with little control over wages, payment timelines or job continuity.

The Gendered Burden

The NCRB data also reveals a sharp gender imbalance. Of the 52,910 daily wage earners who died by suicide, 48,311 were men, while women accounted for 4,575 deaths.

More than 91 per cent of daily wage earner suicide victims in 2024 were men.

The overwhelming proportion of male victims brings attention to patriarchal social expectations that continue to place the burden of being the primary breadwinner on men.

“Suicides are only the tip of the iceberg. There is so much suffering, humiliation and psychological strain underneath that we fail to see,” said Yashpal Jogdand, social psychologist and Associate Professor at Indian Institute of Technology Delhi.

“These deaths are entirely preventable, but instead of understanding the structural reasons behind them, society often blames individuals for being weak or not resourceful enough,” he added.

Jogdand cautioned against reducing people to statistics instead of seeing them as human beings with emotions, relationships and responsibilities.

He said the high percentage of male suicides reflected deeper social expectations around masculinity and responsibility.

“Men are expected to provide for the family, to be strong and dependable. When someone wants to work but cannot support their family despite trying, the psychological impact can be deeply humiliating,” he said.

He also pointed out that for many sanitation workers, dependence on substances becomes a coping mechanism for harsh working and living conditions.

“These situations are socially produced,” he explained.

Jogdand added that women’s lower representation in suicide data does not mean an absence of suffering.

“We simply do not have enough data on suicide attempts, emotional harm or the invisible burdens women carry within these conditions,” he said.

Family, Illness And Debt

The report identified “family problems” as the leading cause of suicide nationally, accounting for 33.5 per cent of cases. Illness accounted for 18 per cent, while drug abuse or addiction made up 7.6 per cent.

“When a worker does not even receive minimum wage, that itself becomes a form of bonded labour. A person who cannot feed their family, repay debt or access healthcare eventually reaches a point where the mind stops functioning under pressure,” said Nirmal Gorana, Convener of the National Campaign Committee for Bonded Labour (NCCBL.

He added that most labour suicides should not be seen as personal failures but as the outcome of economic exploitation.

The NCRB does not directly connect occupation with the stated cause of suicide. But for workers surviving on irregular earnings, many of the leading causes listed in the report overlap with financial distress.

Khan said uncertainty over wages has made everyday survival difficult.

“We do not know whether we will earn ₹10,000 or ₹20,000 this month, but the expenses remain the same,” he said, referring to rent, food, school fees and ongoing medical treatment for his wife.

“A labourer today will do any kind of work — cleaning drains, washing dishes, construction, lifting loads — because they are desperate to earn something. This is what I call ‘wage hunting’. Hunger forces people to accept any work at any wage,” Gorana said.

The report also found that 67.5 per cent of suicide victims were married. More than 62 per cent had an annual income of less than ₹1 lakh, while the largest educational category among victims included those educated only up to matriculation or secondary level.

According to Gorana, domestic workers, gig workers and informal labourers remain largely invisible in government data.

“Just because the system refuses to see them does not mean their suffering is any less. In fact, these are the workers carrying the heaviest burden with the least support,” he said.

Mental Health Without Access

“If a person is struggling for food, clothing and shelter, they are not going to prioritise therapy or emotional wellness,” said Sanober Memon, founder and clinical psychologist at Breather.

“Mental health conversations in India remain deeply shaped by privilege. Survival consumes so much energy that many vulnerable people never even reach a point where mental wellness feels accessible to them,” she added.

Mental health is often discussed as an individual issue. For informal workers, however, access itself becomes a challenge — whether they can afford treatment, take time off work, travel to a clinic or speak openly without stigma.

“When one looks at suicides among daily wage workers, they have to understand that the issues that led them to take such a drastic step did not come out of thin air,” Memon said, adding that stigma and underreporting continue to shape suicide data in India.

The NCRB report also found that people between the ages of 18 and 45 formed the largest share of suicide victims, placing much of the burden on working-age adults.

Memon pointed out that India’s mental healthcare system remains severely under-resourced, with only around 3,000 to 3,400 RCI-registered clinical psychologists in the country — roughly 0.07 psychologists per 100,000 people, far below the recommended global standard of three per 100,000.

She added that this lack of accessible mental healthcare becomes especially critical for daily wage workers, whose lives are shaped by overlapping pressures such as job instability, debt, dowry demands, domestic conflict, substance dependence, caste discrimination, migration stress, poor living conditions and the responsibility of supporting large families.

“When society tells people that seeking help means they are weak or incapable, eventually individuals begin to believe that about themselves too. In already isolated communities, that silence becomes deeply dangerous,” she said.

What The Data Asks

The NCRB findings do not prove that economic insecurity alone causes suicide. Suicide is rarely explained by a single factor. But the fact that daily wage earners form the largest occupational category among suicide victims demands closer attention to the kind of work millions of Indians depend on.

The central question is no longer only whether people have work. It is whether that work provides enough stability to survive a crisis.

“If we cannot do anything for our children, then what have we done in life?” Khan said.

“Sometimes it feels very heavy mentally. You see your helplessness, and the mind just stops working because you do not know what will happen tomorrow.”