Government Takes Measures to Bring More Transparency In Employment Related Data Releases

Government has taken measures in recent past to bring in more transparency in data releases. It would like to present a proper perspective on these issues so that the end users and public at large become aware of the processes involved in generation of these estimates.

Labour Bureau conducts two major surveys on employment scenario i.e Annual Employment-Unemployment Survey (EUS) and Quarterly Employment Survey. So far, five Annual Employment-Unemployment Surveys have been conducted by Labour Bureau and reports on all five surveys have been released. The field work of Sixth Annual Employment Unemployment Survey (2016-17) has been completed and data entry validation work is in progress. The report pertaining to 6th Annual EUS is to be completed by September, 2018.

On the recommendations of Task Force on Employment, chaired by Dr. Arvind Panagariya, the then Vice-Chairman of NITI Aayog the Annual Employment Unemployment Survey has been replaced by Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) being conducted by Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation (MoSPI). The Periodic Labour Force Survey would not only have annual data on employment-unemployment on rural sector but will also have quarterly data on employment-unemployment on urban sector based on larger sample size. Therefore, the corresponding AEUS data set would be comparable.

The Quarterly Employment survey (New Series) is an enterprise based survey, carried out with an objective to measure relative change in employment situation over successive quarters for the establishments having 10 or more workers. The QES has several limitations and 'some of the important ones include i.e (i) enterprise data of the 6th Economic Census (January, 2013 - April, 2014), therefore, does not include the new units which have been added after April 2014 and (ii) takes into account the enterprise having more than 10 workers and does not cover employment in establishments having less than 10 workers. As a result, the QES effectively, captures the employment size of about 2.40 crore workers only as against the total workforce of about 47 crore.

Therefore, the Government has constituted a Technical Committee under the Chairmanship of former Chief Statistician Prof. T.C.A Anant to look into the above aspects and submit its report at the earliest.

The Employees Provident fund Organization (EPFO), a statutory organization under Ministry of Labour & Employment has commenced releasing of payroll data on monthly basis. Under Pradhan Mantri Rojgar Protsahan Yojana, 46.36 lakh new employees covering 58,400 establishments have been enrolled under PMRPY and an amount of Rs. 855 crore has been spent.

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