NEW DELHI: The statistics ministry is likely to release the first monthly unemployment surveys, for both rural and urban areas, in March-end, according to an official source.
The surveys, officially known as the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), will depict unemployment scenarios across the country in urban and rural areas for the month of January 2025, when it is released. “We are going to continue releasing it on a monthly basis from March onwards,” the source said.
At present, the PLFS for urban areas is released on a quarterly basis, and for rural areas on an annual basis. Earlier, the ministry was planning to make the urban PLFS’ frequency monthly, and rural’s quarterly, but now both will be released together, on a monthly basis.
However, the sources said, the sample size for the survey will reduce sharply, to complete the exercise on time. The National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), the ministry’s nodal office to conduct surveys, is likely to visit around 20,000 households for the monthly exercise.
At present, for the quarterly surveys, the NSSO visits nearly 45,000 households. To be precise, for the January-March 2024 urban PLFS exercise, a total of 44,598 households and 169,459 persons were surveyed. “By increasing the strength of the survey team, and making better use of technology, we may survey more households gradually,” the source said.
In the absence of a monthly PLFS, policy makers often quote the monthly unemployment data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) database. However, CMIE has a different survey methodology from the NSSO, which makes the credibility of their data questionable, economists say.
The CMIE considers a person employed if he/she is engaged in any economic activity on the data of the survey or a day prior. Whereas, the PLFS considers a person employed, if he/she has engaged in any activity in a week prior to the survey exercise, also known as ‘Unemployment rate in current weekly status (CWS)’. The monthly PLFS will also be using CWS criteria for assessing unemployment rate, said the source.
Analysts say the reduction in sample size of urban PLFS may not necessarily give a totally different picture of unemployment at a macro/pan-India level, but for states, that may not be the case. The fluctuations between the months is likely to be high, at the state-level, they say.
Source: The Financial Express
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