NSO revamps Periodic Labour Force Survey, includes rural areas

THE National Statistics Office (NSO) announced on Wednesday that the sampling design of the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) has been revamped from January 2025 to address the requirement of high-frequency labour market indicators with enhanced coverage to include the rural areas as well.

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The revamped PLFS is envisaged to estimate the key employment and unemployment indicators comprising Labour Force Participation Rate, Worker Population Ratio and Unemployment Rate, on a monthly basis for rural and urban areas at the all-India level in the Current Weekly Status (CWS).

Usual Status and Current Weekly Status (CWS) refers to frameworks for determining the activity status of persons surveyed based on reference periods of the last 365 days and the last seven days preceding the date of survey, respectively.

The revamped PLFS sample design will enable generation of the monthly estimates of key labour market indicators-- 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 of April 2025 is scheduled to be released in May 2025, according to the NSO statement

At present, PLFS provides quarterly labour market indica-