Economics · Ch 6 — Unemployment
Measurement of Unemployment
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Measurement of Unemployment
Unemployment is most commonly expressed as the unemployment rate — the percentage of the labour force that is unemployed:
Measuring unemployment accurately, however, is harder than the formula suggests, especially in an economy with widespread seasonal work, disguised unemployment, and informal-sector activity where a person's work status can change from week to week. India's employment/unemployment surveys — historically by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), now largely conducted as the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) by the National Statistical Office (NSO), Government of India — have used three different reference-period approaches, each giving a somewhat different picture:
| Approach | Reference period | What it counts |
|---|---|---|
| Usual Status (US) | The preceding 365 days | A person is counted as employed if they were engaged in economic activity for a majority of the days in the reference year. This approach is the least sensitive to short spells of unemployment and generally gives the LOWEST unemployment estimate. |
| Current Weekly Status (CWS) | The preceding 7 days | A person is counted as employed if they worked for at least one hour on at least one day of the reference week — captures more short-term/seasonal joblessness than the Usual Status approach. |
| Current Daily Status (CDS) | Each of the preceding 7 days, counted separately | Each day of a person's week is recorded separately as employed, unemployed, or outside the labour force, based on hours worked that specific day. This is the MOST comprehensive approach and usually gives the HIGHEST unemployment estimate, since it captures even partial or intermittent unemployment within a week that the other two approaches miss. |