ASUSE 2025 maps India's unincorporated sector

The statistics ministry's annual headcount of India's informal, unincorporated non-farm enterprises — the data spine for the part of the economy that payroll and corporate filings never reach.

What happened

• The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) released the detailed report and unit-level data of the Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises (ASUSE) 2025, with a reference period of January to December 2025.
• The survey counted 7.92 crore unincorporated non-agricultural establishments, up from 7.34 crore in ASUSE 2023-24 — a rise of 7.97%.
• Estimated workers in these enterprises reached about 12.81 crore, a 6.18% increase that added roughly 74.52 lakh jobs.
• Gross Value Added (GVA) by the sector grew 10.87% at current prices, led by trade, which rose 16.77%.
• Internet use for business jumped from 26.68% to 39.37% of establishments, with more than half of all traders now using the internet.
• The three states with the most establishments were Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Maharashtra.

Background & context

India's economy has a vast layer that corporate registries and formal payroll records cannot see: the corner kirana shop, the single-loom weaver, the roadside repair garage, the small trading firm run on a proprietor's own capital. These are unincorporated enterprises — units not registered as companies under the Companies Act, owned instead as proprietorships, partnerships (other than Limited Liability Partnerships), co-operatives, or societies and trusts. Because they sit outside corporate reporting, the only way the State can size them is to go out and survey them. ASUSE is that survey.

ASUSE is conducted by the National Statistics Office (NSO) under MoSPI. It is the successor to the older unincorporated-enterprise rounds that the National Sample Survey (NSS) ran periodically — for example the 73rd round on unincorporated non-agricultural enterprises in 2015-16. MoSPI converted that occasional NSS exercise into a regular annual survey, first as ASUSE 2021-22 and ASUSE 2022-23, then ASUSE 2023-24, and now ASUSE 2025. The shift from a once-in-several-years NSS round to an annual instrument is the key institutional change: it gives India a near-yearly read on the informal non-farm economy rather than a snapshot every five or more years.

The survey sits inside a wider statistical architecture that MoSPI maintains — alongside the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) for employment, the Consumer Price Index and Wholesale Price Index for prices, the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) for factory output, and the Annual Survey of Industries (ASI) for the registered factory sector. ASUSE is the counterpart of the ASI for the unregistered world: where the ASI measures factories registered under the Factories Act, ASUSE measures the enterprises that fall outside that net. Together they let the National Accounts Division estimate the GVA of the whole non-farm economy, formal and informal.

A point worth fixing for the exam is the distinction between an enterprise survey and an establishment. ASUSE measures establishments — physical units where economic activity happens — so a single owner running two outlets shows up as two establishments. This is also why the survey's reach is built bottom-up from sampled areas: it does not rely on any register of firms (most of these units are unregistered), so it samples geography and then enumerates the enterprises found there. That is the logic behind the multi-stage stratified design, where First Stage Units (FSUs) are selected first and establishments within them are then listed and surveyed. ASUSE 2025 drew on 6,70,289 establishments across 24,153 FSUs, a sample large enough to support state-level and segment-level estimates.

For Prelims

• Full name: Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises — ASUSE 2025; reference period January–December 2025.
• Conducting body: National Statistics Office (NSO), under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI).
• What it covers (the three segments): manufacturing, trade, and other services. These are the only three sectors in scope.
• What it explicitly excludes: construction and agriculture are not covered. The "non-agricultural" in the description is literal, and construction is also kept out — a common confusion in statement-based questions.
• Ownership types in scope: proprietorships, partnerships excluding LLPs, co-operatives, and societies or trusts. Incorporated companies and LLPs are outside the frame — that exclusion is what the word "unincorporated" means.
• Establishments: 7.92 crore (up 7.97% from 7.34 crore in ASUSE 2023-24).
• Workers: about 12.81 crore, up 6.18%, adding 74.52 lakh jobs.
• GVA: up 10.87% at current prices; trade segment GVA rose 16.77%.
• Gender: female proprietors headed over 60% of manufacturing establishments; women made up about 29% of the workforce; the share of female-headed proprietary establishments rose from 26.17% to 26.93%.
• Formalisation signals: registered establishments edged up from 37.20% to 37.50%; internet use for business rose from 26.68% to 39.37%; average fixed assets per establishment rose from ₹3,24,075 to ₹3,42,242; over 80% of outstanding loans came through institutional channels.
• Methodology: multi-stage stratified sampling; the survey was revised to also yield quarterly estimates; the sample covered 6,70,289 establishments across 24,153 First Stage Units (FSUs).
• Top states by establishments: Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Maharashtra.

What it is NOT: ASUSE is not the Annual Survey of Industries (ASI) — the ASI covers registered factories under the Factories Act, while ASUSE covers the unregistered/unincorporated world. It is not the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), which measures employment and unemployment across households, not enterprises. It does not cover construction or agriculture, and it does not include incorporated companies or LLPs. It is not a one-off census — it is a sample survey run annually.

The MoSPI survey set it belongs to (for "match the pairs" and "how many" questions): ASUSE (unincorporated non-farm enterprises), ASI (registered factories), PLFS (labour force), CPI and WPI (prices), IIP (industrial output), and the Economic Census (a full count of establishments). ASUSE and the ASI are complementary halves — unregistered and registered — of the non-farm enterprise universe.

Why it matters

The unincorporated sector is where the majority of India's non-farm livelihoods sit. Formal-sector data — corporate results, EPFO payroll additions, GST filings — capture only the organised tip of the economy. The 7.92 crore establishments and 12.81 crore workers that ASUSE counts are largely invisible to those instruments, yet they are decisive for questions of employment, informality and inclusive growth. Without a regular survey, policy on the informal economy would be flying blind.

The annual cadence is the real significance. When the data came only from a periodic NSS round, India saw the informal economy in slow-motion snapshots taken years apart — useless for tracking shocks such as demonetisation, the GST rollout or the pandemic in real time. An annual (now quarterly-capable) ASUSE turns that into a moving picture: the year-on-year jumps in establishments (+7.97%), workers (+6.18%) and GVA (+10.87%) are now measurable rather than inferred.

The survey also tracks the slow grind of formalisation and digitisation. The rise in registered establishments (37.20% to 37.50%), the sharp climb in business internet use (26.68% to 39.37%), and the finding that over 80% of outstanding loans now flow through institutional channels are all signals that the informal sector is gradually being drawn into the formal financial and digital grid. The gender findings — female proprietors heading over 60% of manufacturing establishments and a rising share of female-headed proprietary units — feed directly into the policy conversation on women's economic participation.

For the National Accounts, ASUSE is load-bearing. The GVA of the unincorporated sector is a direct input into India's GDP estimation for the non-farm informal economy; a better, more frequent survey means a more reliable national income estimate. The problem it addresses is fundamental: you cannot manage what you cannot measure, and ASUSE is how India measures the half of its enterprise economy that does not file corporate returns.

For Mains