Decent Work and Employment Insecurity in Bihar: Evidence from PLFS 2023-24

India has a rising proportion of the working-age population driven by a larger level of population. The youth, women bulge has the potential to productively contribute to the growth of an economy if desired employment opportunities are available in the labour market. This paper presents the structure and nature of employment for the Bihar labour market with compare to the Indian labour market with the challenges with respect to employment generation and quality of employment. In the study of PLFS 2023-24 data sources find that Bihar have very low labour force participation rate rural as well as urban, also the female labour force participation rate very low, social security benefited job is also very low in terms formal job, and lack of access to written contact is also very low. This study examines the extent of decent work deficits and employment vulnerability in Bihar using micro-level data from the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS, 2023-24). The study focuses on key dimensions of employment quality; including employment opportunity for all: labour force participation rate, nature of employment: formal-informal, status of employment: regular employment, self-employed and casual employment percentage. Bihar generates most of the self-employment 68.61% rural and 54.59% urban, regular casual employment share is 24.46% rural and 16.13% rural and lowest share of regular employment 29.27% urban and very low regular employment in rural sector (6.93%). The challenge of employment quality generation is big concern in India as well as Bihar. There is a predominance of low-quality employment in Bihar in terms of lack of access of decent work. Most of the workers of Bihar are informal workers (96.88%), without written job contract, and lack of access of social security benefits. The inability of the economy to generate sufficient and decent employment opportunities for the youth will affect leveraging the demographic dividend and has several social and developmental consequences.