Where does your income actually stand in India?

This uses the all-India frame — where you stand among all 140 crore Indians, not just the ~9 crore who file a tax return. That's why the bars sit lower than you'd expect: ₹25,000–30,000 a month already puts you in India's top 10%. Among tax filers alone the same bars would sit roughly 10x higher.

Read the frame tag on every number

These are three different populations. A person in the top 10% of one is not in the top 10% of another, so we tag each line rather than blending them:

ADULT ~100 crore adults. All income including rent and dividends. World Inequality Lab.
WORKER ~60 crore workers. Earnings from work only. PLFS / NSO.
FILER ~9.2 crore tax filers. Declared income. CBDT. Used only for the ₹1 crore line — never for percentiles.

The thresholds

Line	Source
Middle of India ₹8,300–11,000/mo	ADULT median adult ≈ ₹1 lakh/yr — World Inequality Lab, 2024 (income year 2022-23). WORKER median ≈ ₹9,000/mo, from PLFS 2023-24 unit-level data (Das & Mishra, Outlook Business, 30 Jan 2025). Shown as a range because the sources disagree and both predate 2026.
Bottom half ₹5,900/mo	ADULT the bottom 50% average ₹71,000 a year — 0.3x the national average. Bharti, Chancel, Piketty & Somanchi, Income and Wealth Inequality in India, 1922–2023 (WIL, March 2024).
Top 22% above ₹15,000/mo	WORKER only the top 22% of the labour force clear ₹15,000/mo; the bottom 27.5% earn under ₹3,000. Independent analysis of PLFS 2023-24 unit-level data by Das & Mishra, Outlook Business, 30 Jan 2025 — not the published PLFS report itself.
Top 10% ₹25,000–30,300/mo	WORKER ₹25,000/mo is already top 10% — EAC-PM / Institute for Competitiveness, State of Inequality in India (2022, extrapolating PLFS 2019-20). ADULT entry ₹2.9 lakh/yr = ₹24,167/mo (WIL 2024). Two methods, same neighbourhood.
Top 5% ₹50,000/mo	WORKER ₹50,000/mo sits in the top 5% — and it holds across both PLFS and CMIE-CPHS, two surveys that otherwise disagree sharply on earnings. Jha & Basole, Labour Incomes in India, Indian Journal of Labour Economics 66(1), 2023. Data vintage 2018-19 — the oldest figure on this page, so read ₹50–60k as the honest range today.
Top 1% ₹1.7–2.5 lakh/mo	ADULT it takes ₹20.7 lakh a year to enter the top 1% — WIL 2024. The upper end of the band reflects the wider ₹30–32 lakh/yr figure used in the episode.
₹1 crore club ~3.24 lakh people	FILER 3.24 lakh individuals declared over ₹1 crore for FY 2024-25, as of 31 March 2025 — 0.35% of the 9.19 crore who filed, and under 0.03% of the country. Income Tax Department e-filing statistics.

What an average Indian earns

For 2023-24, PLFS puts the WORKER monthly average at ₹20,702 for regular salaried, ₹13,279 for self-employed, and ₹418 a day for casual labour. As reported in Economic Survey 2024-25, p.378.

Dates, and what's changed since

Nothing here is a live figure. The thresholds come from data collected in 2018-19 (Jha & Basole), 2019-20 (EAC-PM) and 2022-23 (WIL); the earnings averages from 2023-24 (PLFS); the ₹1 crore count is closed FY 2024-25 data as of 31 March 2025. PLFS has since changed its methodology and moved to calendar-year reporting, so its 2025 figures aren't directly comparable to the ones above.

The day-by-day costs

Rent, food, commute and staff figures in the timelines are illustrative — drawn from the 5 incomes episode, not from a survey. They describe a plausible day at each income, not your day. Nothing here is financial advice, and no single number should be read as a verdict on anyone's life.

Every source, in full

1. Bharti, Chancel, Piketty & Somanchi (2024). Income and Wealth Inequality in India, 1922–2023: The Rise of the Billionaire Raj. World Inequality Lab, WP 2024/09. wid.world (PDF)
2. World Inequality Lab (2024). Towards Tax Justice and Wealth Redistribution in India. Issue Brief 2024/01 — carries the median, top-10% and top-1% rupee thresholds. wid.world
3. Jha, M. & Basole, A. (2023). Labour Incomes in India: A Comparison of Two National Household Surveys. Indian Journal of Labour Economics 66(1), 181–201. doi.org · abstract on RePEc
4. Institute for Competitiveness for EAC-PM (2022). The State of Inequality in India. PIB release
5. NSO / MoSPI (2024). Periodic Labour Force Survey, Annual Report July 2023 – June 2024. Full report (PDF) · press note
6. Income Tax Department, Government of India. E-filing statistics — counts of returns by income range. incometax.gov.in
7. Das & Mishra (2025). Analysis of PLFS 2023-24 unit-level data, Outlook Business, 30 January 2025. No permanent public link available.
8. Ministry of Finance (2025). Economic Survey 2024-25, p.378 — reproduces the PLFS earnings averages at [5].