Are you one of those people who feels that they are overworked and underpaid?
Every Monday morning, do you get that sinking feeling—that “Oh my God! I have to go back to that awful place, to that job which I hate”?
Do you feel anxious, feel that knot in your stomach when you see your boss approaching, because your immediate boss is always trying to humiliate you, scare you into working more and more?
Well, here is the good news—the silver lining in this rather gloomy picture, if one could say that, is that you are not alone.
A majority of Indian white-collar professionals feel this way now.
What Surveys Tell Us
First, the question of work hours.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) says that Indians are among the most overworked in the world. 51 percent of Indian workers work more than 49 hours a week, which is what the ILO considers to be more than what anyone should work.
We have the dubious distinction of being number two in the world's overworked population ranking—only Bhutan ranks above us.
Second, on being underpaid.
The latest survey by the jobs portal Foundit found that 47 percent of Indian professionals are unhappy with their salaries and pay hikes.
Third, job satisfaction.
A study done by Manpower Group in 2024 says one in three professionals in India are dissatisfied with their work.
That’s a very high number if you want your team to be productive in this super-competitive world. ADP’s study for 2025 reveals an even more dismal picture. Only 19 percent, or 1 in 5, professionals feel engaged with their work. And this is a sharp decline from last year when the employee engagement rate in India was 24 percent.
What is even more worrying is that India is the only large economy where employee engagement has fallen. Everywhere else, ADP found a higher level of engagement among employees.
Why is that?
Of course, being overworked and feeling underpaid is always going to cause burnouts and reduce employee engagement.
Working Hard is a Norm
As compared to India's 51 percent, only 12 percent of the workforce in the US works more than 49 hours a week. In the UK, that number is just 9 percent.
Now, you are probably thinking, “What is 49 hours? I work 60 hours a week.”
In fact, the ILO’s numbers are likely to be a big understatement when it comes to white-collar workers in India as it is an average of all kinds of employees, including blue-collar workers, who are governed by stricter labour laws. White-collar professionals, like you and me, have no such protection.
Other surveys done recently show that Indian professionals work 49 to 51 hours on average. In some industries, it is as high as 70 hours a week. In consulting, it is 120 a week.
What is worse is that all of us have internalised this.
If we have a presentation to do, we’re not supposed to be working on it while we are in office. We are expected to do that burning the midnight oil at home. And this is not only in the corporate space; it is true even if your white-collar job is teaching in a school.
Teachers, say, are expected to prepare for their classes at home. It’s not counted as part of their work. School teachers are expected to prepare their lectures, check homework, and grade exam papers at home. They not only put in the work hours in school but have to put in another three to four hours of teaching-related work at home, just to keep up with their tasks.
So, overwork has become a norm across the board for white-collar employees in India. And it is not as if you are left to work at peace. Here's some more data:
A survey by Indeed, a global hiring firm, found that 88 percent of Indian professionals are regularly interrupted by their bosses after work hours
85 percent reported that they are expected to work on their off days, when they are on vacation, and even when they are on medical leave.
79 percent of employees said they fear retribution if they don’t work on their weekly offs. They feel ignoring work-related communication will affect their professional reputation—they will be passed over when it is time for promotions, they won’t get good raises, or they might just be sacked.
Work-Life Balance?
No wonder we, the middle class, are pushed to put in crazy hours at the expense of our personal lives and family time.
But you know what? If you are compensated financially for hard work, most people would be willing to take it.
As the latest survey by jobs portal Foundit, done in March-April this year, found that 47 percent of professionals are unhappy with their salaries, and more so, with their pay hikes. The level of dissatisfaction is the highest among entry-level employees—those who have worked for up to three years. And as you go up the experience ladder, people start accepting that this is what they will get.
Another survey, the Deel Gen Z Salary Satisfaction Survey, came up with similar numbers. It found that 41 percent of Gen Z employees are unhappy about their pay.
Two-thirds of them say their salary hikes don’t keep pace with rising prices. They are not even saying “pay us more”; they are just asking for their salaries to match inflation. In fact, the Foundit survey found that 59 percent of white-collar professionals have had very low salary hikes in the past three years.
What is worse is that another 13 percent had no pay hike at all.
And mind you, we have seen very high inflation during this period—at least of things that the middle class spends on. So, there’s a sense of being overworked and a sense that you are either underpaid for the work you do or that your salary hasn’t kept pace with inflation. They are seeing their purchasing power shrink, and standard of living decline.
Why the Middle Class Workers Are Disengaged
There is a bigger reason for feeling dissatisfied with one’s work situation, and that is the excessive levels of workplace toxicity in India.
A report by Amaha Health quotes a 2024 survey by Foundit that says a whopping 68 percent of workers in India feel that their workplace is toxic. And 43 percent blame their immediate bosses for it. And why do these bosses and team leaders do this?
They do it because they face the same toxicity from their bosses—it trickles down from the top.
And how does this toxicity manifest itself? Employees are humiliated by their immediate bosses, made to feel scared about their jobs, that their promotions will be held, or they might even be sacked. There are constant snide comments. Bosses blatantly steal credit to show to their superiors how hard they are working. And the authoritarian environment that is created allows bosses to openly play favourites with their people.
Seven out of 10 white-collar employees face this kind of toxicity every day. If that is how you’re treated in your workplace, why would you put in that extra effort to innovate for your employer? Why would you want to build something new?
You are left feeling tense and anxious all the time. You feel that you are sacrificing your self-respect to earn money for your spouse and kids. And you end up taking it out on them by being irritable, angry, cold, and unreasonable. No wonder 60 percent of professionals in India say they face significant stress at work, and a whopping 81 percent of managers fear that they will lose their job in the next six months.
Companies Are Cutting Costs
The reason for all this is an overall economic slowdown, which our GDP numbers don’t reveal. If we look at the numbers compiled by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) of the top 5,400-odd companies in the country, which regularly publish their financial data, we will see the true picture.
In the past two years, the net sales of these top companies have increased at an annual rate of just 6.2 percent. If you adjust for average inflation, combining retail and wholesale prices, then the real growth in sales has been a measly 3 percent per year. Yet, their net profits have risen at an annual rate of 21.4 percent.
The only way that was achieved was by cutting costs.
The easiest way to do that is to reduce the wage and salary bill and extract more work out of your employees—in other words, overwork and underpay them. So, while profits rose by more than 21 percent per year, wages and salaries went up by just 8.7 percent. And most of that increase would have been captured by those at the top—the so-called C-suite employees: CEOs, COOs, and CFOs.
Hope that our corporates wake up and realise that if things continue like this, India will be left far behind in the innovation race.
Watch the full video for more.
(The author was Senior Managing Editor, NDTV India & NDTV Profit. He tweets @Aunindyo2023.)