By Dr. Gyan Pathak
India, for the first time, have planned to bring out employment profiles for cities having million plus population as well as city level profiles of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises. The former, as is proposed, will provide key labour market indicators, such as Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR), Worker Population Ratio (WPR), and Unemployment Rate. The later, will capture the scale, structure, employment, and economic performance of the urban informal sector.
A consultation paper on the proposed framework for generation of city-level estimates based on the existing PLFS and ASUSE data is now uploaded on the MoSPI website for wider consultation of stakeholders. The views of Stakeholders are invited to review and suggest improvements to the proposed framework, indicators, methodology, and dissemination strategy; to refine it based on the feedback. Suggestions, feedbacks and comments may be sent to the ministry by May 15, 2026.
These reports will be based on existing data from the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) and the Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises (ASUSE), both of which already allow statistical estimation at the city level, though generally considered of poor quality, which do not reflect the hard reality on the ground and conceals the frightening reality of unemployment. The methodologies for both surveys are still being contested as faulty and unreliable by experts, while Modi government claims these data realtime and reliable. Using data from these and the KLEMS data of the Reserve Bank of India, Modi government claims reducing unemployment rate to just about 3 per cent, which is contested by Experts, who claim that India has fallen into unemployment crisis.
It is in this backdrop in which people are demanding for more reliable data from the Modi government, the invitation for comments and suggestions from stakeholder by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) for the proposed framework, indicators, and dissemination strategy for generation of city-level statistical reports has acquired significance.
According to the government press release, India is experiencing rapid urbanisation, with cities increasingly driving economic growth, employment generation, and structural transformation. Despite this, official statistics at the city level remain limited, constraining evidence-based urban policy and planning. To address this gap, the National Statistics Office (NSO), under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), proposes to develop and disseminate dedicated city-level statistical reports for 47 million-plus cities (as per Population Census 2011).
The government has proposed tow annual thematic reports – the first will present the Employment Profile of Million-Plus Cities, and the second will present a City-Level Profile of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises. This proposed development of city-level statistical reports marks an important step, says MoSPI, in aligning India’s statistical system with the realities of a rapidly urbanising economy. By bringing cities into sharper analytical focus, the initiative seeks to bridge critical data gaps and support informed decision-making at all levels of governance.
The initiative aims to enhance the availability of granular urban statistics, support city-level policy formulation, contribute to city-level GDP estimation, and improve understanding of urban labour markets and enterprise dynamics. The reports will be disseminated annually in the public domain using user-friendly formats.
It is worth recalling that unincorporated sector enterprises are businesses not registered as separate legal entities from their owners, meaning the owner holds personal liability for all debts. Primarily operating in the informal, non-agricultural, micro, and small-scale sectors, these include sole proprietorships and partnerships. They are crucial for employment, covering manufacturing, trade, and services. LFPR is the number of persons either employed or unemployed on an average in a reference period, such as a week in CWS or a year in the Usual Status. The WPR is the number of persons in the entire population who actually worked at least 1 hour in a week in CWS and 30 days in a year in Usual Status.
PLFS was launched by PM Narendra Modi led government in April 2017, which replaced the National Sample Survey Office’s (NSSO) quinquennial Employment and Unemployment Surveys (EUS) and also the Labour Bureau’s Employment and Unemployment Surveys. The objective of the new PLFS was to generate frequent and realtime reliable data on employment and unemployment, and the first Annual PLFS was published for the year 2017-18. Government also brought quarterly PLFS data for urban areas with delay, and yearly for the rural areas.
Real time data for both urban and rural areas were not made available until May 2025, when the first revamped PLFS data for the month of April 2025 was published. The new methodology and design for the revamped PLFS was adopted from January 2025. Nevertheless, the quality of the revamped PLFS is still debated and is considered of a poor quality by experts alleging that the data do not reflect the reality on the ground. The current revamped PLFS is also facing significant criticism from economists, researchers, and feminist scholars regarding its design, data quality, and interpretation of labour market trends.
As for the Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises (ASUSE), it was initially launched on an experimental basis in 2019 by the National Statistical Office (NSO). However, a full-fledged, regular annual survey was officially launched in April 2021, and is being published regularly every year. The purpose was to measure the economic and operational characteristics (employment, GVA, assets) of unincorporated non-agricultural enterprises, serving as a vital input for GDP calculation. It covers unincorporated manufacturing, trade, and other service sectors (excluding construction).Quality of these surveys are also considered poor, since it is not a direct MSME census, but estimates MSME numbers through proxy data. (IPA Service)
