Abstract 

Recent estimate of central statistics office for 2014-15 indicates that share of agriculture in GDP (market price) is about only 14.9 per cent, whereas it employs about 49.5 per cent of India’s total workforce. So moving out of agriculture is itself a desirable outcome for improving productivity in agriculture and also of the economy. But the question is “where will the workers of agriculture sector move to?” given the fact that Indian labour market is becoming more and more informal. Therefore, creation of decent jobs outside agriculture is one of the biggest challenges that confront policymakers. The present paper examines the trend and patterns of informal and formal employment in organised and unorganised non-agriculture sectors with special reference to North-East India. The paper, following National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector (NCEUS) defined organised and unorganised sector by taking into account enterprise type and number of workers in enterprise. However, where both these information are missing, social security was taken as a yard stick to measure organised or unorganised sector.