Periodic Labour Force Survey

Last Updated24/07/2021

The third annual report on periodic labour force survey (PLFS) has been released by National Statistical Office (NSO).
For the third annual report on PLFS, a little over one lakh households and around 4.2 lakh persons, both in urban and rural areas, were surveyed.
The third survey was conducted for period of July 2019-June 2020.

Considering the importance of availability of labour force data at more frequent time intervals, National Statistical Office (NSO) launched Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) in April 2017.
The first Annual Report (July 2017- June 2018) covering both rural and urban areas giving estimates of all important parameters of employment and unemployment in both usual status (ps+ss) and current weekly status (CWS) was released in May 2019 and the second Annual Report ( July 2018 - June 2019) was released inJune 2020.

to estimate the key employment and unemployment indicators ( Worker Population Ratio, Labour Force Participation Rate, Unemployment Rate) in the short time interval of three months for the urban areas only in the ‘Current Weekly Status’ (CWS).
to estimate employment and unemployment indicators in both ‘Usual Status’ and CWS in both rural and urban areas annually.

A rotational panel sampling design has been used in urban areas.
In this rotational panel scheme, each, selected household in urban areas is visited four times, in the beginning with ‘First Visit Schedule’ and thrice periodically later with a ‘Revisit Schedule’.
In urban area, samples for a panel within each stratum were drawn in the form of two independent sub-samples.
The scheme of rotation ensures that 75% of the first-stage sampling units are matched between two consecutive visits.
There was no revisit in the rural samples. For rural areas, samples for a stratum/sub-stratum were drawn randomly in the form of two independent sub-samples. For rural areas, in each quarter of the survey period, 25% FSUs of annual allocation were covered.

The unemployment rate fell to 4.8% in 2019-20. In 2018-19, it stood at 5.8% and 6.1% in 2017-18.
The monthly jobless rate for March 2020 was 8.75%, which rose to 23.52% in April 2020, then came down a little to 21.73% in May and in June 2020, it was 10.18%.
The unemployment rate in January this year was at 6.52%, 6.89% in February, 6.5% in March, 7.97% in April, 11.9% in May and 9.17% in June 2021.
The worker population rate (WPR), defined as the percentage of employed persons in the population, improved to 38.2% in 2019-20 compared with 35.3% in 2018-19 and 34.7% in 2017-18. The higher the LFPR, the better.
The jobless rate for both male and female fell to 5.1% and 4.2%, respectively, in 2019-20 from 6% and 5.2% in 2018-19.

LFPR is defined as the percentage ofpersons in labour force (i.e. working or seeking or available for work)in the population.

UR is defined as the percentage of persons unemployedamong the persons in the labour force.

The activity status of a person is determined on the basis of the activities pursued by the person during the specified reference period. When the activity status is determined on the basis of the reference period of last 365 days preceding the date of survey, it is known as the usual activity status of the person.

The activity status determined on the basis of a reference period of last 7 days preceding the date of survey is known as the current weekly status (CWS) of the person.