Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS),Calendar Year 2025 (Jan-Dec25)

India

Get Microdata

Reference ID

DDI-IND-NSO-PLFS-Jan2025-Dec2025

Collections

Periodic Labour Force Survey

Metadata

DDI/XML JSON

Created on

Mar 27, 2026

Last modified

Jun 17, 2026

Page views

31822

Downloads

12523

Identification

Survey ID number

DDI-IND-NSO-PLFS-Jan2025-Dec2025

Title

Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS),Calendar Year 2025 (Jan-Dec25)

Country

Name
INDIA

Abstract

PLFS was launched in 2017 essentially to address the following two objectives
• to estimate the key employment and unemployment indicators (viz. Worker Population Ratio, Labour Force Participation Rate, Unemployment Rate) in the short time interval of three months for the urban areas only in the Current Weekly Status (CWS)
• to estimate employment and unemployment indicators in both usual status (ps+ss) and CWS in both rural and urban areas annually
Usual Status (ps+ss) and Current Weekly Status (CWS) refer to frameworks for determining activity status of persons surveyed based on reference periods of last 365 days and last 7 days preceding the date of survey, respectively.
Considering the need for the generation of high-frequency labour force indicators with enhanced coverage, the sampling methodology of the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) has been revamped from January 2025. The revamped PLFS design is envisaged to address the following objectives
• to estimate the key employment and unemployment indicators (viz. Labour Force Participation Rate, Worker Population Ratio and Unemployment Rate) on a monthly basis for rural and urban areas in the Current Weekly Status (CWS1) at the all-India level
• to extend the coverage of the Quarterly results of PLFS to rural areas and thereby producing quarterly estimates covering both rural and urban areas of India in the Current Weekly Status (CWS)
• to estimate important employment and unemployment indicators in both Usual Status (ps+ss) and CWS for rural and urban areas annually

The key indicators released in the Annual Reports of PLFS 2025 include the following:
• Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR), Worker Population ratio (WPR) and Unemployment Rate
• Distribution of workers by status in Employment
• Distribution of workers by industry of work (National Industrial Classification – 2008)
• Distribution of workers by occupation (National Classification of Occupation - 2015)
• Employment in informal Sector and conditions of employment
• Earnings from employment
• Hours worked

Kind of Data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Unit of Analysis

The first stage unit (FSU) is the 2011 census village in the rural sector. In the case of Kerala, Panchayat Wards will be FSUs in rural sector. FSU in the urban sector in PLFS is the Urban Frame Survey (UFS) block.

Scope

Keywords

PLFS LFPR UR CWS Current Weekly Status Worker Population Ratio WPR Unemployment Rate Labour Force Participation Rate Periodic Labour Force Survey

Coverage

Geographic Coverage

The survey covers the whole of the Indian Union except the villages in Andaman and Nicobar Islands which remain extremely difficult to access throughout the year. For the annual estimates of the labour force parameters in PLFS, during January, 2025 to December, 2025, a total of 22,594 FSUs (12,441 villages and 10,153 urban blocks) were surveyed for canvassing the PLFS schedule (Schedule 10.4). The number of households surveyed was 2,70,472 (1,48,718 in rural areas and 1,21,754 in urban areas) and number of persons surveyed was 11,48,634 (6,56,160 in rural areas and 4,92,474 in urban areas).

Producers and sponsors

Funding Agency/Sponsor

Name	Abbreviation
MINISTRY OF STATISTICS & PROGRAMME IMPLEMENTATION	MoSPI

Sampling

Sampling Procedure

A rotational panel sampling design has been used in the survey. The rotational scheme is of two-year duration to accommodate the changes in the frame in the intercensal period, in the sense that the sampling frames for both rural and urban areas will remain unchanged for every two-year duration. In this rotational panel scheme, each selected household has been visited four times in four consecutive months – one with first visit schedule and other three with the revisit schedule. Annual estimates of the parameters were generated based on both usual status (ps+ss) and Current Weekly Status (CWS) approaches.
The first visit schedules are canvassed in the selected households. The selected FSUs/households were revisited in the subsequent three months, as the panel will remain in the sample for four months. During the revisit, listing and selection of households were not done afresh. Only the households selected during the first visit were revisited for the canvassing revisit schedule. At the time of revisit, if any sample household is not found, same treated as a casualty and a substitute household is not surveyed. If any sample household is found to be split, then, among the split households available in the FSU/sub-block, the household where the head/senior most member of the erstwhile household available is covered.
A stratified multi-stage design was adopted for PLFS. The first stage units (FSU) were the Urban Frame Survey (UFS) blocks in urban areas and 2011 Population Census villages (Panchayat wards for Kerala) in rural areas. The ultimate stage units (USU) were households. As in usual NSS rounds, in the case of large FSUs, one intermediate stage unit, called hamlet group/sub-block, was formed.
The sampling frame for the urban sector is the list of Urban Frame Survey (UFS) blocks as per the latest UFS and for the rural sector, it is the list of villages as per Census 2011, updated by removing those villages that are urbanized and included in the latest UFS (till the time of sample selection). To ensure uniformity in the size of FSUs and for operational convenience, large villages/UFS blocks are notionally divided into smaller units of more or less equal size, known as sub-units depending on a pre-defined criteria of population in the village or number of households in the UFS block.

Metadata production

DDI Document ID

DDI-IND-NSO-PLFS-Jan2025-Dec2025

Producers

Name	Abbreviation	Affiliation
National Sample Survey Office	NSS	Ministry of Statistics and PI

Back to Catalog