Quarterly Periodic Labour Force Survey: Unemployment rate at record low in September quarter

This was the second consecutive quarter of a decline in the unemployment rate for urban areas, after the unemployment rate had inched up to 6.7 per cent during January-March this year. Gender wise split showed that the unemployment rate for females was also at a record low of 8.4 per cent in July-September. However, this marked the fifth consecutive quarter of the female unemployment rate remaining above 8 per cent. For males, the unemployment rate inched lower to 5.7 per cent in July-September from 5.8 per cent a quarter ago and 6 per cent a year ago.

The quarterly PLFS data measures labour market indicators such as unemployment rate, LFPR and WPR based on the current weekly status for urban areas. As per the current weekly status, the labour activity status is determined on the basis of a shorter reference period of last seven days preceding the date of survey.

For the annual unemployment and labour force figures under the PLFS, the measure is usually seen for the longer term through the usual status (ps+ss) approach. The workforce in the usual status (ps+ss) includes the persons who worked for a relatively long part of the 365 days preceding the date of survey and the persons from among the remaining population who had worked at least for 30 days during the reference period of 365 days preceding the date of survey.

For the type of employment, the PLFS data showed an improvement for the regular wage/salaried workers as well as self-employed workers. The share of persons engaged in regular wage jobs rose to 23.1 per cent in July-September from 22 per cent in the year-ago period and 22.6 per cent in April-June. The percentage of persons engaged as own account worker and employers increased to 15.3 per cent in July-September from 14.4 per cent in the year-ago period but was marginally lower than 15.4 per cent in the previous quarter. This is among the last set of PLFS surveys which is being released quarterly. The government is planning to bring out monthly periodic labour force surveys for both rural and urban areas from January next year.

The Ministry will also release a back series, at least for the previous 12 months, with adjustments made in line with the higher standard error of the new monthly series of the PLFS to make the data comparable.