The physically active group rates its health highest and reports the lowest blood-panel uptake

The group that describes its working day as physically active gives itself the best health rating of the three and reports the lowest blood-panel uptake. Those answers come from different questions and mean different things. One is how respondents rate their health. The other is whether they report having had a blood panel in the year.

More than half the responses describe a desk-based working day#

The 2026 survey asked one question about how the working day is spent. Of 9,097 responses, 7,861 answered it, choosing one of three descriptions.

More than half the answers describe a day spent mostly at a desk. The question is single-choice, so each answer picks one of these three and nothing else.

What the answer does not tell you is how much anyone actually moves. It is a description of a job, chosen by the person doing it, with the third option offering three examples: field work, delivery, and hospitality. It records nothing about hours on foot, what gets carried, or what happens once the shift ends. It is a label, not a measurement.

The three groups also differ in who is in them. A quarter of the physically active answers, 25.4% of 979, name an annual income under ₹3 lakh, against 14.3% of 2,552 mixed answers and 9.9% of 4,328 desk-based ones. These are not interchangeable populations sorted only by posture, and income returns on the testing question below.

The physically active group rates its health highest#

Two questions ask respondents to rate their own health, physical and mental, on a five-point scale.

Each cell shows the share and the number of responses answering both that rating question and the work-style question.

Three in four of the physically active answers put physical health in the top two ratings on the scale; closer to six in ten of the desk-based answers do. The mental-health column runs the same way, from 58.4% to 76.0%. Whatever else the label describes, the group that chose it is the most confident of the three about how its health is going.

These ratings describe how respondents view their health. They do not show whether someone has an undetected condition.

The physically active group also reports the lowest blood-panel uptake#

A separate question asked what respondents had actually done about their health in the last year. It listed five things: a routine check-up or preventive doctor consult, a doctor visit for a specific symptom, a full-body blood panel covering vitamins, lipids and sugar, a company-organised health camp, and a fitness assessment. It also offered "none of these". 7,048 responses answered it, and 7,047 of those also named a work style.

Responses describing physically active work are the least likely of the three groups to report a blood panel: 16.9%, about a third below the 24.9% and 25.9% of the other two. They are also the likeliest of the three to have selected "none of these", at 48.9%.

"None of these" is a box on that list. 53 of the 7,048 responses ticked it alongside one of the five listed activities, and the rates above keep those responses as they were given. The figure records what was selected, not a verified year without care.

Panel uptake more than triples across the income range#

The same question, cut by reported annual income:

Uptake rises at every step up the seven named bands, from 15.6% to 54.3%, though the bottom two sit within 0.2 points of each other rather than a clear rung apart. More than half of the top band reports a panel in the year; fewer than one in six of the bottom band does. The 540 responses that declined to give an income are shown separately, because they are not a point on the ladder. The Income & Job Role page carries this cut in full.

The physically active group sits disproportionately in the lowest of those bands.

Work style and income are separate, unadjusted comparisons. They cannot establish whether income explains the testing gap. The survey records reported activity, not what care was offered, cost or needed.

About a third of desk-based and physically active answers report no 30-minute exercise day#

Three more questions ask about exercise, sleep and stress.

Each cell shows the share and the number of responses answering both that question and the work-style question.

On the first measure, the desk-based and physically active groups are almost level. A third of the responses describing physically active work report no day reaching 30 minutes of exercise, 33.3%, and so do 33.4% of the desk-based. Whatever a physically active job supplies over a shift, it does not show up as a smaller share here. The Movement & Exercise page carries the whole-survey distribution behind the question.

The group with the lowest share on that measure is neither pole. Desk work plus movement, under six hours seated, comes in at 25.8%, roughly seven and a half points below both ends. The same group has the lowest share in the two shortest sleep bands, 27.7%, and the lowest share rating last week’s stress at 7–10 out of 10, 37.1%. On all three questions the working day that mixes sitting and moving sits below either one on its own, by modest margins: 4.7 points between the highest and lowest short-sleep share, 5.4 points on stress. The Sleep and Stress pages set out the answer bands and the survey-wide patterns.

One more behaviour separates the groups slightly. Daily smoking of cigarettes or bidis is reported by 9.6% of the 864 physically active responses that answered the nicotine question, against 8.1% of 2,332 mixed and 7.9% of 4,024 desk-based: a spread of 1.7 points, running towards the physically active end rather than away from it. That question is single-choice, so this counts the answers that chose "daily smoker" and not occasional smokers, smokeless tobacco users or vapers. The Nicotine page carries the full answer list.

Zero exercise means no day reaching 30 minutes, not no movement. Short sleep combines the under-five and five-to-six-hour bands. Stress is last week's self-rating. Comparisons do not adjust for age, sex or income.