New Delhi: Daily wage earners constituted the single largest occupational demographic of the 1,70,746 cases of deaths by suicide recorded in India during 2024, accounting for 52,910 deaths or 31% of the national aggregate, according to latest data released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). This number is considerably higher than the next largest occupational group, ‘housewives’ (22,113), and other dominant categories such as ‘other persons’ (20,184) and ‘self-employed persons’ (17,886).Percentage Distribution of Suicide Victims by Profession During 2024, Photo: NCRB Accidental Deaths & Suicides in India, 2024.Daily wage earners were also the largest occupational group impacted in 2023, making up 28% (47,170) of all deaths by suicide during the year. A comparative analysis of the previous decade’s data reveals that daily wage earners, homemakers and self-employed people have consistently accounted for the three largest sub-groups under the deaths by suicide category, however, the share of cases among homemakers and self-employed individuals has decreased since 2015.Similarly, people engaged in the farming sector, including farmers, cultivators and agricultural labourers, comprising 6.2% of the national total of deaths by suicide in 2024, observed a drop in the share of recorded deaths from 8.7% in 2016.Also read: India’s Crisis of Violence Against Women is National, It Shouldn’t Be Weaponised for PoliticsNevertheless, the share of daily wage worker deaths under the category has continued to increase, rising from 17.8% in 2015, 19.2% in 2016, 22.1% in 2017, 22.4 % in 2018 and 23.4% in 2019 to the current worrisome proportion of 31%. The gender ratio within this group is highly skewed, with 48,311 male victims making up roughly 91% of the total recorded cases in 2024.State-wise, Tamil Nadu recorded the highest number of daily wage earner deaths by suicide (10,556), consisting of nearly one-fifth of the national total, followed by Maharashtra (6,811), Telangana (5,745), Madhya Pradesh (5,299) and Kerala (4,223).The data adds that over 62.9% of the all people who died by suicide, 1,07,455 cases, had an annual income lower than Rs. 1 lakh. Additionally, a further 31.6% or 53,994 individuals fell into the Rs. 1-5 lakh per year bracket. Thus, about 95% of the total people who died by suicide in 2024 earned less than Rs. 5 lakh annually.Bankruptcy and indebtedness accounted for 7,529 cases, while poverty was recorded as the main cause in 1,004 deaths by suicide. Unemployment was recorded as a direct cause in 2,479 cases. Regardless, these figures no not fully portray the vital role played by financial stress and economic strain in driving deaths by suicide in India, with little done to address the rising numbers of daily wage workers dying each by suicide.If someone you know is struggling, please reach out to them. The Suicide Prevention India Foundation maintains a list of telephone numbers to speak in confidence. iCall, a counselling service run by TISS, has a crowdsourced list of therapists across the country, you can reach them at +91 9152987821. You could also take them to the nearest hospital.