Estimation of unemployment in India

Economy and Finance

Estimation of unemployment in India

19 Jul 2023 Zinkpot 182

The National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) has developed three measures for the estimation of unemployment in India:
Usual Status Unemployment: This approach considers only those individuals as unemployed who had no gainful work for a major time during the 365 days preceding the date of the survey and are seeking or are available for work.
This measure gives the lowest estimates of unemployment.
Weekly Status Unemployment: In this approach, the week preceding the date of the survey is taken into consideration and those people are classified as unemployed, who did not have fruitful work, even for an hour, on any day in the preceding week but were seeking or were available for work.
It records a person to be employed, even if he works only for an hour or any day of the whole week.
Unlike the usual status unemployment approach, the weekly status approach would also capture seasonal unemployment. The people who may be employed on the usual status approach may, however, become unemployed during some seasons or parts of the year, but would not be recorded.
Daily Status Unemployment: Under this approach, a person is regarded as employed or unemployed by taking into account the labor for each day in the reference week.
Further, for estimating employment and unemployment, half day has also been adopted as a unit of measurement under this approach.
A person who works for four hours or more, up to eight hours on a day, is regarded as employed for the full day. And the one who works for an hour or more, but less than 4 hours on a day, is recorded as employed for half day.
Accordingly, people having no gainful work, even for one hour a day, are described as unemployed for the full day, provided that they are either seeking or are available for a job.
Thus, the daily status approach would capture not only the unemployed days of those people who are usually unemployed but also the unemployed days of those who are recorded as employed on a weekly status basis, thus making this concept more inclusive than those of usual status and weekly status approaches.