The Periodic Labour Force Survey: the three labour indicators and the two activity-status approaches

Background

The Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) is conducted by the National Statistics Office in the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, as one of the surveys conducted by NSS. It was launched in April 2017 to produce the key employment and unemployment indicators: the Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR), the Worker Population Ratio (WPR) and the Unemployment Rate (UR). LFPR is the percentage of persons in the labour force in the population; WPR is the percentage of employed persons in the population; and UR is the percentage of persons unemployed among the persons in the labour force. A person's activity status is fixed under two frameworks: Usual Status (ps+ss), which uses a reference period of the last 365 days, and Current Weekly Status (CWS), which uses the last seven days preceding the date of survey. At the start the quarterly results covered urban areas only, in CWS, while the annual report covered rural and urban areas in both approaches, and the survey used a rotational panel sampling design in urban areas. The sampling design was revamped from January 2025: monthly estimates of LFPR, WPR and UR are now produced for the all-India level in CWS, the quarterly estimates extend to rural areas, and the annual results follow the calendar year.