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India's Labor Data Gets Makeover: Unpaid Work, Gig Workers Included
23 Oct
Summary
- Unpaid activities like caregiving and own-use production will be surveyed.
- Digital platform workers will be identified to improve labor market data.
- New survey methods aim for a more comprehensive assessment of work.
Starting January next year, India's labor data will be significantly enhanced through revisions to the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS). The survey will now incorporate questions on unpaid activities. These include own-use production of goods, unpaid household and caregiving tasks, volunteer work, and unpaid trainee work. This expansion is expected to provide a more detailed understanding of various forms of work.
Furthermore, the PLFS will introduce new methods to measure labor underutilization and identify households with digital platform workers. This initiative aims to capture a more nuanced picture of the labor market, especially concerning the gig economy, which was inadequately represented in previous surveys.
The PLFS schedule is being modified with additional questions to better assess labor underutilization on an experimental basis. New questions will also help identify households with digital platform workers, leading to the creation of a new Second Stage Stratum (SSS) for improved data collection on this growing sector.
To ensure better representation, especially of the urban population, fresh samples for 2027-2028 will be drawn from an updated frame. This updated frame will reflect recent urbanisation, changes in administrative units, and census data, ensuring more accurate labor force measurement.
