Context: MoSPI has released India’s first-ever monthly labour market data under the revamped Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) for the month of April 2025.
Relevance of the Topic: Prelims: Key trends and statistics from India’s first-ever monthly labour market data under PLFS (April 2025).
First monthly Periodic Labour Force Survey (April 2025):
- India’s first-ever monthly unemployment data under the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) was released for April 2025.
- Released by: The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI).
- This marks a shift from earlier annual or quarterly datasets to more frequent, granular reporting of labour market conditions.
- The size of sample households has also increased, which can help provide better information about the labour market and its seasonality factor.
- The revamped model assesses employment and unemployment data from rural areas too.
Periodic Labour Force Survey:
- PLFS is India’s primary official source for measuring employment and unemployment indicators.
- Launched by: National Statistical Office under the MoSPI in 2017, replacing the earlier Employment-Unemployment Surveys (EUS) conducted by the NSSO.
- PLFS provides estimates based on two reference periods:
- Usual Status (US): capturing long-term employment over the previous 365 days.
- Current Weekly Status (CWS): capturing short-term employment over the last 7 days.
Current Weekly Status (CWS) Methodology:
The PLFS uses the CWS approach to estimate labour indicators. Under CWS, a person is considered:
- Employed if they worked at least one hour on any day during the 7 days preceding the date of the survey.
- Unemployed if they did not work at all but were available for or seeking work for at least one hour on any day during that week.
The estimates of unemployment in CWS give an average picture of unemployment in a short period of 7 days during the survey period. This helps capture dynamic labour market trends more frequently and is the basis for calculating the monthly UR, LFPR, and WPR.
Key Highlights of the First PLFS monthly bulletin:
1. Unemployment Rate (UR):
- The unemployment rate (UR) in April was 5.1%. As this is the first monthly data, no comparisons are available.
- The report for 2024 had recorded an unemployment rate at 4.9%.
- Male vs Female UR: UR among males was higher at 5.2% compared with female UR of 5%.
- Rural vs Urban UR: Urban UR for all persons was higher at 6.5%, as compared to rural UR at 4.5%.
2. Labour Force Participation Data:
- Labour Force Participation Rate: LFPR is defined as the percentage of persons in the labour force (i.e. working or seeking or available for work) in the population.
- LFPR in CWS among persons of age 15 years and above was 55.6% during the period.
- Rural vs Urban: LFPR in rural areas was 58% and in urban areas it was 50.7% in April for persons of the same age group.
- Rural men vs women: LFPR among rural men of age 15 years and above was 79% and it was 38.2% for women.
- Urban men vs women: LFPR among women of age 15 years and above was 25.7% compared with 75.3% observed for men of the same age-group.
3. Worker Population Ratio:
- Worker Population Ratio: WPR is defined as the percentage of employed persons in the population. WPR = (Total number of workers / Total population) × 100
- Overall WPR: WPR at the country level was observed as 52.8% during April.
- WPR in rural areas among persons of age 15 years and above was 55.4%.
- WPR in urban areas among persons of the same age group was 47.4%
The revamped PLFS marks a significant step towards real-time labour market monitoring in India, enabling more responsive and evidence-based employment policies.