Haryana is home to the highest number of India’s most productive districts in the informal non-agricultural economy, with seven of its districts ranking among the top 50 nationally by gross value added (GVA) per worker for market establishments, according to the first-ever district-level estimates released by the National Statistics Office (NSO).
Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Telangana follow with six districts each, with districts in just eight states accounting for 40 of the 50 most productive districts, highlighting the sharp geographic concentration of productivity in India’s unincorporated sector.
The estimates come from the Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises (ASUSE) 2025, whose redesigned sample allowed the NSO, for the first time, to publish figures for 757 individual districts across all states and Union Territories.
At the top of the list, Satara in Maharashtra records the highest output per worker of Rs 8.7 lakh among all districts in the states, followed by Fatehgarh Sahib in Punjab and Tonk in Rajasthan. The national average value added per worker stands at Rs 1.56 lakh.
Further, when looking at women’s participation, the Northeast and southern states lead the charts. Ranked by the share of female workers, the 50 districts with the highest participation lie overwhelmingly in Telangana and the Northeast — nine in Telangana, eight each in Manipur and Mizoram, and six each in Meghalaya and Tamil Nadu.
The single most female-intensive district is Nirmal in Telangana, where women make up more than three-quarters of the informal workforce, followed by Imphal East in Manipur and Nizamabad in Telangana.
At the other end of the spectrum, women make up just 6.7 per cent of informal workers in Rudraprayag, Uttarakhand, followed by Marigaon in Assam at 9.5 per cent and Banaskantha in Gujarat at 10.7 per cent.
Nationally (states/UTs), the NSO estimates that women form a third of the workforce in 237 districts and an outright majority in 25.
“The top 10 districts with the highest share of female-led unincorporated establishments are located in Telangana, Manipur and Meghalaya. In Mizoram, female-owned proprietary establishments account for at least 50 per cent of establishments in each district of the State,” the ministry said.
According to the ministry, the unincorporated non-agricultural sector exhibits a notable concentration of economic activity across districts. “The top 10 districts, ranked by the estimated number of unincorporated establishments, together account for about one-tenth of the total establishments, workers and Gross Value Added (GVA) generated by the sector while the top 50 districts capture nearly one-third of the total establishments, workforce and GVA. The top 10 districts are spread across four States: Gujarat, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal,” it added.
