Periodic Labor Force Survey 2019-20
Periodic Labor Force Survey 2019-20
Recently, the third annual report on ‘Periodic Labor Force Survey’ (PLFS) was released by the National Statistical Office (NSO). This report is based on the survey conducted between July, 2019 and June, 2020.
In this report an improvement has been registered in the labor indicators in the year 2019-20 as compared to the last two years, i.e., 2017-18 and 2018-19.
Objective:
- Its first objective is to estimate key employment and unemployment indicators, i.e. labor-population ratio, labor force participation rate, unemployment rate, at short-term intervals of three months for urban areas only at the current weekly position (CWD).
- Its second objective is to estimate employment and unemployment indicators, both in rural and urban areas, in both general condition (PS+SS) and current weekly status (CW-S) per year.
Key Points:
- The unemployment rate fell to 4.8% in the financial year 2019-20, as compared to 6.1% in the year 2017-18 and 5.8% in the year 2018-19.
- Labor force participation ratio has increased to 40.1% in the year 2019-20 as compared to 37.5% and 36.9% in the last two years respectively. The higher the ‘Labor Force Participation Ratio’ in the economy, the better it is for any economy.
- The work population rate has improved in the year 2019-20 and reached 38.2% as compared to 35.3% in the year 2018-19 and 34.7% in the year 2017-18.
- The analysis of the data reveals that, the gender-based unemployment rate for both male and female has declined to 5.1% and 4.2% respectively in the year 2019-20 from 6% and 5.2% respectively in the year 2018-19.
Conceptual outline of employment and unemployment signals
The Periodic Labor Force Survey (PLFS) gives estimates of important employment and unemployment indicators such as labor force participation rates (LFPR), worker-population ratio (WPR), unemployment rate (UR), etc. These indicators are defined below:
- Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR): The labor force participation rate is defined as the percentage of persons under the labor force, that is, employed or looking for work or available for work, to the total population.
- Worker-Population Ratio (WG PR): The worker-population ratio is defined as the percentage of employed persons to the total population.
- Unemployment rate (UR): It is defined as the percentage of unemployed persons to the total number of people included in the labor force.
- General Status of Activity: The activity status of any person is determined on the basis of the work done by that person during the specified reference period. When the activity status is determined based on the reference period of 365 days immediately preceding the date of the survey, it is known as normal3 activity status of that person.
- Current Weekly Status (CWS): When the activity status is determined based on the reference period of seven days immediately preceding the date of the survey, it is known as Current Weekly Status (CWS) of the person .
Periodic Labor Force Survey (PLFS):
Role:
- The Periodic Labor Force Survey has been launched by the National Statistical Office (NSO) in the year 2017. The Periodic Labor Force Survey is India’s first computer-based survey.
- It was formed on the basis of the recommendation of a committee headed by Amitabh Kundu.
- The Periodic Labor Force Survey essentially collects data at several stages along with mapping the employment situation in the country. Such as the level of unemployment, types of employment and related partners, wages earned from different types of jobs, number of hours worked etc.
- Prior to the Periodic Labor Force Survey, the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), formerly known as NSO, collected employment and unemployment-related data on the basis of its five-year (every 5 years) household socio-economic survey programme.
Source: Indian Express
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