Unemployment rate in urban areas has dropped a tad in October-December quarter of 2024, data released by the Statistics Ministry on Tuesday showed.
“Unemployment Rate (UR) in urban areas among persons of age 15 years and above decreased from 6.5 per cent during October-December, 2023, to 6.4 per cent during October-December, 2024,” said a statement from the Ministry. While, UR among males of age 15 years and above remained the same at 5.8 per cent, that for women in the same age group dipped to 8.1 per cent as against 8.6 per cent in the year-ago period.
UR is defined as the percentage of unemployed individuals part of the labour force. This rate is arrived at through a survey. Better known as the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), it gives an estimate of employment and unemployment indicators like the Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR), Worker Population Ratio (WPR) apart from UR. For the current survey, sample size was over 45,000 households and 1.7 lakh persons.
According to survey result, LFPR in urban areas among persons of age 15 years and above has increased to 50.4 per cent from 49.9 per cent. An increase was observed among both males and females. WPR in urban areas in the given age group has increased to 47.2 per cent from 46.6 per cent.
Labour force refers to the part of the population, which supplies or offers to supply labour for pursuing economic activities for the production of goods and services and, therefore, includes both employed and unemployed persons.
The NSSO had launched PLFS in April 2017.
On the basis of PLFS, a quarterly bulletin is released giving estimates for labour force indicators, namely UR, WPR, LFPR, distribution of workers by broad status in employment and industry of work in terms of CWS (current weekly status).
The estimates for unemployed persons in CWS give an average picture of unemployment over a span of seven days during the survey period. As per the CWS approach, a person is considered unemployed if he/she did not work even for one hour on any day during the week, but sought or was available for work at least for one hour on any given day during the period.
Labour force, according to CWS, is the number of persons either employed or unemployed on average in a week preceding the date of the survey. LFPR is defined as the percentage of the population in the labour force.
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