National Statistics Office (NSO) under the 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. LFPR, WPR and 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. The number of households to be surveyed within a selected geographical unit (FSU) has been increased from 8 to 12 households. The enhanced sample size is expected to provide reliable estimates of labour market indicators with improved precision.

In addition, some changes have also been incorporated in the structure of the Schedule of inquiry. Users of PLFS results need to consider the changes implemented in PLFS from January 2025 while comparing PLFS results with estimates released through PLFS publications up to December, 2024. The results of the PLFS post January 2025 thus need to be understood and used in the context with which the sample selection methodology of PLFS has been designed.

The monthly estimates of labour market indicators are released in the PLFS monthly bulletin along with the measures of error due to sampling in the form of Relative Standard Error (RSE). The RSE of the labour market indicators released till date at the all-India level has remained within acceptable limits. The low levels of RSE of the headline indicators brings forth the reliability of the estimates.

The Monthly Bulletins of PLFS for the months April 2025, May 2025 and June 2025 have been released following a predefined timeframe for release of the results and are made available on the website of the ministry of ease access of users at large. At present the monthly results of PLFS disseminates labour market indicators at the country level and do not have provision for bringing out State level estimates.

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: 2153056)