Periodic Labour Force Survey: NSO releases Annual Report for July, 2018 to June, 2019
Published: Jun 05, 2020
By TIOLCORPLAWS News Service
NEW DELHI, JUNE 05, 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) on April 2017. The objective of PLFS is primarily two-fold:
- to estimate the key employment and unemployment indicators (viz. 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 (ps+ss) and CWS in both rural and urban areas annually.
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. This is the second Annual Report being brought out by NSO on the basis of Periodic Labour Force Survey conducted during July 2018-June 2019.
Sample Design of PLFS
The sampling design remains the same as during 2017-18, that is, a rotational panel sampling design 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 (FSUs) 1 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. In view of these changes, the PLFS estimates are not comparable with the results of Employment Unemployment Survey (EUS) of 2011-12 and earlier years.
Villages and urban blocks are the smallest area units taken as first-stage sampling units (FSU) in rural and urban areas respectively.