Periodic Labour Force Survey: the National Statistics Office survey behind the Labour Force Participation Rate, Worker Population Ratio and Unemployment Rate

Background

The Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) is conducted by the National Statistics Office (NSO) of the Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation (MOSPI). PLFS was launched in 2017 essentially to address the requirement of generating estimate of the key employment and unemployment indicators quarterly for the urban areas only in the Current Weekly Status (CWS), and annually in both usual status (ps+ss) and CWS for rural and urban areas. The key labour market indicators it yields are the Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR), Worker Population Ratio (WPR) and Unemployment Rate (UR). Usual Status (ps+ss) and Current Weekly Status (CWS) refer to frameworks for determining activity status of the person surveyed based on reference periods of last 365 days and last seven days preceding the date of survey, respectively. The sampling design of PLFS has been revamped from January 2025, so that the key indicators are now released on a monthly basis at the all-India level, the quarterly results cover rural areas as well, and the annual results follow the calendar year. The revamped design is a multistage stratified design in which district has been made the primary geographical unit, called basic stratum, for selecting First Stage Units (FSUs). 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), against 12,800 FSUs surveyed upto December, 2024. A total of 12 households will be surveyed from each of the selected FSUs, giving an overall sample size of around 2,72,304 households, and each selected household is visited four times in four consecutive months.