Devil Is In The Details

Current Surveys Provide a Broad Employment Scenario but Miss Out on Insights Required for Inclusive Policymaking.

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For the longest time, we simply have not had a method for frequent collection of jobs data. The main source of data is the National Sample Survey (NSS), which is collected every five years. The NSS used to have an annual round, which represented the country as a whole but could not break the data down to states as the sample size was small (40,000). Regarding jobs, there is more interest in state-wise data than the national statistics. That is why the data was not used very much, and my mid- 2000 annual survey was stopped. Since then, we only have five-year jobs data.

Along with that, the Labour Bureau used to collect data essentially on wages. But after the global financial crisis in 2009, the bureau was told to start a survey on job losses. So, it selected nine industries (across labour intensive sectors) to measure job losses. As it started collecting jobs data, the Labour Bureau stopped collating wage data in 2009.

Then the bureau started an annual survey like the NSS survey sometimes in 2011 to measure job creation. The first couple of annual surveys were not good but then it was revised, and now the survey is good enough.

So, once the periodic labour force survey by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), which gives annual statistics of employment state-wise (urban and rural) and quarterly estimates for urban areas, stabilises, the Labour Bureau would stop its annual labour survey and go back to wage survey. Wage data is important because it reflects the bargaining power of the labour force, and in a way, indicates the employment situation.