The growth in real rural wages is now negative for the tenth straight month to September. While the contraction is largely due to elevated inflation, the sluggishness in the rural economy has left demand for labour subdued, thereby capping nominal wages. Worse, rural India is yet to restore the millions of jobs lost during the pandemic. On a net basis, rural employment is even now 8.3 million less than it was before pandemic, according to a study by Kotak Institutional Equities. The services industry itself is yet to regenerate 7.9 million of the jobs lost during the pandemic.