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The statistics ministry is likely to start releasing the monthly Periodic Labour Force Survey-Urban (PLFS-Urban), from January 2025, as it aims to increase the frequency of employment-related data collection and dissemination, official sources said. However, this would entail a substantial reduction in sample size, they added. “For the urban PLFS exercise, we visit around 45,000 households…this will reduce, as otherwise, we won’t be able to complete the exercise on time,” the official said. Currently, the urban PLFS is released on a quarterly basis, but with a lag, which undermines the utility of the survey for policy makers. “It’s because of the direction of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), that we’re (National Sample Survey Office) now working on conducting monthly-urban-PLFS,” another official said. For the January-March 2024 urban PLFS exercise, a total of 44,598 households and 169,459 persons were surveyed, which is similar to the sample size of the surveys conducted in previous quarters as well. The official said the NSSO would try to survey at least 70% of the households (surveyed for quarterly PLFS) for the monthly exercise. “If we increase the strength of the survey team, and make better use of technology , we may survey more households gradually,” an official noted. 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, say economists. 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)’. Economists 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. “At the state level, there may be an issue. The fluctuations between the months will also be high, at the micro-level (states),” said NR Bhanumurthy, director, Madras School of Economics. “Regardless, the monthly data should definitely come. Fast growing economies should get employment data on a monthly basis, similar to other high-frequency data,” he added. Official sources said the NSSO may also release the first-quarterly PLFS data for rural areas in January 2025, and then gradually work towards releasing the rural-PLFS data on a monthly basis. At present, the rural PLFS is only released on an annual basis. None
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