The National Statistics Office (NSO), Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation, released its Quarterly Bulletin of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises (QBUSE) for April-June 2026, showing resilient growth in the unincorporated non-agricultural sector despite global uncertainties. The sector recorded 9.2% year-on-year growth in establishments, reaching 8.67 crore units, while employment grew 6.55% to 13.70 crore workers.
Employment growth was primarily driven by the Other Services sector, which recorded over 21% growth in both establishments and workforce. The Manufacturing sector also showed strong performance with 10.06% growth in establishments and 6.60% growth in workforce. However, the Trade sector experienced a decline of 7.88% in establishments and 10.29% in workforce, which the report contextualizes with the transformation of retail landscape including e-commerce and quick-commerce expansion.
Workforce composition showed working owners constituting 62.38% of total workers (up from 60.18% in April-June 2025), while hired workers' share declined to 22.77% from 24.38%. Urban employment growth significantly outperformed rural areas, recording 12% year-on-year growth compared to 0.70% in rural sectors.
Women's participation in the workforce strengthened to over 30% of total employment, slightly higher than the same quarter previous year. Digital adoption showed impressive progress with 82% of establishments using internet for entrepreneurial purposes and 80% adopting cashless transaction modes including online banking, UPI, and POS devices.
Formalization trends accelerated with 42.5% of establishments reporting some form of registration, representing a 7 percentage point increase from April-June 2025. The survey covered 5,994 First Stage Units (2,411 rural villages and 3,583 urban blocks) with 175,618 establishments surveyed across manufacturing, trade, and services sectors excluding construction.
The report notes methodological improvements including adoption of NIC 2025 classification (replacing NIC 2008) and comprehensive redesign of the ICT module to capture more policy-relevant digital adoption metrics. Sample coverage excluded some difficult-to-access areas of Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep, Ladakh, and rural Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland.