Smaller towns are surging ahead as hubs of jobs and entrepreneurial activity, beating larger cities and even metropolises. While industrial activity declines in big cities, smaller cities and towns are picking up the slack, often displaying a preference for manufacturing at the cost of the services sector. Construction is booming and related jobs are more to be found in smaller towns. These are some of the facets of urban India revealed in a recent NSSO report on employment in cities.Among Class III towns - those with a population less than 50,000 - nearly 45% of male workers and over 50% of female workers were self-employed. In big cities with a million-plus population, the proportion of self-employed was about 36-38% for both men and women. Self-employed includes very small industrial or service sector units as well as shops.Compared to 2004-05, in 2011-12, the latest year for which this data is available through NSSO survey reports, there has been a general decline in self-employment while regular wage or salaried employment has gone up in all sizes of cities and towns.In big million-plus cities, a high 55% of men and 58% of women in the workforce were getting a regular wage or salary. This percentage was below 50 a decade ago. Life is more uncertain and livelihood a work in progress, as one descends the ladder of town/city size. Because, one step down, in Class II cities with population less than one million but more than 50,000, the proportion of salaried workers is 41-43% for both men and women. In towns with less than 50,000 population, the proportion of salaried sinks to just 34% for men and 27% for women.But smaller towns and cities are perhaps going through an evolution that big cities saw a couple of decades earlier. Between 2004-05 and 2011-12, male employment in the tertiary or services sector expanded in million-plus cities from 61 to 63% while industrial employment declined from about 38 to 36%. But in Class III towns, service sector jobs declined from 53 to 51% while industrial jobs increased from 32 to 35%. For women, the changes were more drastic with industrial jobs declining from nearly 34% in big cities to 29 % but zooming up from 29 to 38 % in small towns.The smaller the town, the more it is tied up with the rural economy, which provides jobs to an increasing proportion even from urban areas. In towns below 50,000 population, a quarter of the female workforce and about 14% of male workers still worked in agricultural operations, which are physically close and tightly intertwined with the small-town economy. In million-plus cities, just 2% of the female workforce and less than 1% of male workers were involved in agriculture, mostly at the geographical fringes of the metropolises.The decline of female employment opportunities in these years has led to an increase in urban women working in agricultural activities with their proportion rising from about 18% to 25% in Class III towns. Male participation in agriculture in urban areas has remained stagnant or declined.Casual labour by men appears to have increased in smaller towns although it has declined for women. In small towns, share of men doing casual work was 19% in 2004-05 which inched up to 21% in 2011-12 although the corresponding share of women in casual work dipped from 23 to 22%.