Quarterly urban employment data in a year

The National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) has started the pilot project for the country’s first-ever quarterly data on employment in urban areas which may be released in a year’s time.

The survey will give a comprehensive picture of the labour force in urban areas.

Officials said the survey would reveal key employment indicators like number of people employed, wages and salaries of employees, number of casual labourers and even the number of self-employed and educated unemployed in urban parts of the country on a quarterly basis. The need for such a data was being felt for a long time as the country does not have regular information on employment and unemployment.

At present, the data on employment and unemployment by NSSO comes every five years and that too with lot of lag making policy decisions based on them redundant. The last data for the year 2009-10 on NSSO came earlier this year.

However, under the new format, NSSO data will come after every three months and regularly.

“What we have planned is that employment data for July-September quarter will be released by October and that for October and December quarter by late January of February,” a senior official from the organisation said.

The pilot is being conducted in Gujarat, Orissa and Himachal Pradesh and would be rolled out across the country as and when the pilot is over.