Revamped Periodic Labour Force Survey to offer enhanced coverage of labour market indicators

Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation has noted some changes in Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) from 2025. As a part of this continuous endeavour aimed at enhancing the surveys of NSS, the sampling design of 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 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. The first monthly bulletin of PLFS for the month April, 2025 is scheduled to be released in May, 2025.

At present PLFS provides 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. The first quarterly bulletin of PLFS covering both rural and urban areas for the quarter April-June, 2025 is slated to be released in August 2025.

From the year 2025, the annual PLFS results will be brought out based on the calendar year i.e. survey period of January – December of a specific year (e.g. January 2025 – December 2025). This change in disseminating the PLFS annual results and unit level data will facilitate comprehensive analysis of labour market performance through review of key employment unemployment indicators and also assist in timely updation of India’s labour market statistics in the databases maintained by the international agencies.

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.

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