News Highlights
The National Statistical Office (NSO), which functions under the Union Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, released the annual report on the basis of the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS)
Major Findings of Periodic Labour Force Survey
- The survey said the unemployment rate saw a decrease from 4.8% in 2019 – 20 to 4.2% in 2020 -21, meaning that 4.2% of adults who looked out for jobs could not get any work in rural and urban areas of the country in 2020 – 21.
- Unemployment in Rural Areas – In rural areas, the rate of unemployment is is 3.3%
- Unemployment in Urban Areas – in urban areas the unemployment rate was recorded at 6.7%
- Migration – The report, which also gave details of internal migration, said 11.8 people out of 100 samples migrated to other States during the period of survey.
Method of Periodic Labour Force Survey
- Urban – A rotational panel sampling design has been used in urban areas, which means each selected household in urban areas is visited four times.
- Rural – No revisit in rural areas and the samples were drawn randomly in the form of two independent subsamples.
- Combination of Both
- The sample size for the first visit during July 2020June 2021 in rural and urban areas was 12,800 first stage sampling units (FSUs) consisting of
- Out of this, 12,562 FSUs (6,930 villages and 5,632 urban blocks) were surveyed for canvassing the PLFS schedule.
- The number of households surveyed, according to the NSO report, was 1,00,344 (55,389 in rural areas and 44,955 in urban areas) and number of persons surveyed was 4,10,818 (2,36,279 in rural areas and 1,74,539 in urban areas).
- The PLFS gives estimates of key employment and unemployment indicators like the Labour Force Participation Rates (LFPR), Worker Population Ratio (WPR) and Unemployment Rate (UR)
Issues with Periodic Labour Force Survey
- Cannot produce decent data on migration.
- PLFS cannot compare a normal year with an abnormal, pandemic hit year
- a second visit to the rural households could have provided a bigger and larger picture of unemployment that was not captured by the PLFS
| Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) – The Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) was designed with two major objectives for measurement of employment and unemployment. The first was to measure the dynamics in labour force participation and employment status in the short time interval of three months for only the urban areas in the Current Weekly Status (CWS). |
Use of Data
- The data is used basically for planning governmental intervention in various sectors such as agriculture, infrastructure, animal husbandry etc.
- For drafting any policy, data has to be used in a context.
Pic Courtesy : The Hindu , Business Today
Content Source : The Hindu