National Statistics Office (NSO) under Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) has been conducting Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) since 2017 to estimate various indicators related to employment and unemployment in the country. The sampling design of Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) has been revamped from January 2025 to address the requirement of high frequency labour market indicators with enhanced coverage from PLFS. The revamped PLFS is envisaged to address the following objectives:

• to estimate the key employment and unemployment indicators (viz. 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).
• to extend the coverage of the Quarterly results of PLFS to rural areas and thereby producing quarterly estimates at the country level and for major States in the Current Weekly Status (CWS) .
• to estimate important employment and unemployment indicators in both usual status (ps+ss) and CWS in both rural and urban areas annually.

 

The revamped PLFS sample design from January 2025 results in the following updation in the PLFS dissemination:

 

Availability of monthly estimates of key labour market indicators at the country level: The revamped PLFS sample design will enable generation of the monthly estimates of key labour market indicators viz. Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR), Worker Population Ratio (WPR) and Unemployment Rate (UR) at the all-India level following the Current Weekly Status (CWS) approach. The monthly estimates will help in timely policy interventions.

Extending quarterly estimates to rural areas: Upto December, 2024, PLFS provided quarterly labour market indicators for the urban areas only. With the updation in the PLFS sample design quarterly estimates of employment unemployment indicators will be available for both rural and urban areas and hence for the entire country.

Enhanced sample size: The revamped PLFS sample design is a multistage stratified design. List of census 2011 villages / urban Frame Survey (UFS) blocks / sub-units (for those villages or UFS blocks where sub-units are formed within) together formed the sampling frame for selection of the First Stage Units (FSUs). In the revamped PLFS sample design, a total sample size of 22,692 FSUs is planned to be surveyed (12,504 FSUs in the rural areas and 10,188 in the urban areas) in each year of the two-year panel with first visit schedule as compared to 12,800 FSUs surveyed in PLFS upto December, 2024.

A total of 12 households will be surveyed from each of the selected FSUs which implies an overall sample size of around (22,692 x 12) = 2,72,304 households. 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). The enhanced sample size is expected to provide reliable estimates of labour market indicators with improved precision.

This information was given by the Minister of State (Independent Charge) of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation; Minister of State (Independent Charge) of the Ministry of Planning and Minister of State in the Ministry of Culture, Rao Inderjit Singh, in a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha today.

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Samrat/Allen

(Release ID: 2150169)