As the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) sets out to release Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) on a monthly basis starting May along with quarterly reports for both rural and urban areas, the revamped survey will have additional details about education; land possessed and land leased out; and households’ usual monthly income from rent, pension, interest and remittances.
The revamped PLFS will also see the reporting period being tweaked to a calendar year basis, beginning January 2025 instead of July-June earlier, the Ministry said on Wednesday.
“As a part of this continuous endeavour aimed at enhancing the surveys of NSS, the sampling design of PLFS has been revamped from January 2025 to address the requirement of high frequency labour market indicators with enhanced coverage from PLFS,” the Ministry said.
The first monthly bulletin of PLFS for April is scheduled to be released in May, while the first quarterly bulletin of PLFS covering both rural and urban areas for April-June is slated to be released in August.
Four additional details regarding usual monthly income of the household from renting of land or building, from interest on savings and investment, from pension received and from remittances received have been incorporated in the revamped PLFS. Additionally, two additional questions on land possessed and land leased out as on the date of the survey by the surveyed household, one item of information on the nature of the certifying body from which vocational/technical training received, and five additional education-related items of information have been incorporated.
The additional education-related details in the new survey include queries on the years of education completed, number of months attended in the last year of education, and secondary education.
The Ministry said the annual PLFS results will be brought out based on the calendar year from 2025 onwards, that is, survey period of January–December of a specific year. “This change in disseminating the PLFS annual results and unit level data will facilitate comprehensive analysis of labour market performance through review of key employment, unemployment indicators and also assist in timely updation of India’s labour market statistics in the databases maintained by the international agencies,” it said.
The revamped PLFS will have a total sample size of 22,692 first stage units (FSUs) (12,504 FSUs in the rural areas and 10,188 in the urban areas) in each year of the two-year panel compared with 12,800 FSUs surveyed in PLFS upto December 2024. Each selected household will be visited four times in four consecutive months – one with first visit schedule and other three with the revisit schedule in the following three months, the Ministry said.
A total of 12 households will be surveyed from each of the selected FSUs which implies an overall sample size of around 2,72,304 households (22,692 x 12). “This marks a 2.65 time increase in sample households to be covered in PLFS as compared to the number of sample households covered upto December 2024 (which was around 1,02,400),” it said.
The PLFS will cover key employment and unemployment indicators (labour force participation rate, worker population ratio, unemployment rate) on a monthly basis for rural and urban areas at all-India level in the current weekly status (CWS) and thereby produce quarterly estimates in both usual status (ps+ss) and CWS in both rural and urban areas annually.
Usual status (ps+ss) and current weekly status (CWS) measure activity status of persons surveyed based on reference periods of last 365 days and last seven days preceding the date of survey, respectively.
The Ministry said users of PLFS results need to consider the changes implemented in PLFS from January 2025 while comparing results with estimates released up to December 2024. The Ministry was earlier considering releasing a back series, at least for the previous 12 months, to make the new monthly series of the PLFS comparable with the earlier one.
The National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) under MoSPI had launched PLFS in April 2017. Quarterly bulletins provided details of labour force indicators such as LFPR, WPR, unemployment rate. At present, the MoSPI releases rural PLFS data on an annual basis and urban PLFS data on a quarterly basis along with an annual report which combines data for both urban and rural on an annual basis. Other employment surveys such as the survey by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) comes out on a weekly and monthly basis.
