INDIA - Unit Level Data of Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) July 2020-June 2021

Rotational panel design for urban areas
i.The initial rotational panel is for two years, where only 25% FSUs of urban annual allocation will be covered in the first quarter (Panel Ptwo-year period of rotation. 11) with detail listing and canvassing of visit 1 schedule in the selected households.
ii. Another 25% FSUs will be covered in the second quarter (Panel P12) for taking up visit 1 schedule and revisit schedule will be canvassed in the selected households of Panel P11.
iii. A new panel P13 of 25% FSUs will be surveyed in third quarter with visit 1 schedule and revisit schedules will be canvassed in the households of panels P11 & P12.
iv. In the fourth quarter, households of panels P11, P12 & P13 will be surveyed with revisit schedule and a new panel P14 with 25% FSUs for visit 1 schedule.
v. In the subsequent quarters of second year 75% FSUs (3 panels - P12, P13 & P14) will be common and an earlier panel (P11) will be replaced by a new panel (P15) for canvassing visit 1 schedule. This will continue till 8th quarter.
vi. All the FSUs of the panels P11, P12, ...., P18 (each of which is with 25% of FSUs) will be selected before commencement of survey in the first quarter.
vii. At the end of the second year of each two-year duration, updated frame will be used for both rural and urban areas.
viii. FSUs of another set of panels P21, P22, ..., P28 selected from the updated frame will be made ready before commencement of first quarter of third year (first quarter of the second two-year duration). These panels P21 to P28 will take care of the changes in the urban frame during the intracensal period.
ix. In the ninth quarter (first quarter of the second two-year duration), panel P21 selected from the updated frame will be introduced and the panels P16, P17 and P18 of the old frame will be surveyed.
x. This scheme will continue for another 2 years with the introduction of panels P22 to P28 each in one quarter for the subsequent 7 quarters till the end of the fourth year (second year of the two-year period).
xi. This scheme of rotation of panels will enable generation of estimates of change parameters with 75% matching and 25% of unmatched samples from fifth quarter onwards.
xii. One of the main advantages of this plan of rotation is that there will not be any break in the series of estimates of the change parameters starting from 5th quarter.
xiii. Since major changes in the rural-urban frame occurs in the Census years (say for the year 2023-24), provision is to be made to generate estimates without break in the series of estimates considering panels from pre and post-census frames.

1.3.3 Rural samples
For rural areas, samples for all the 8 quarters have been selected before commencement of survey for each two-year period, while the frame remains same for this duration. In each quarter, only 25% FSUs of annual allocation (as is done in each sub-round of NSS rounds) are being covered in rural areas so that independent estimates can be generated for each quarter. For this purpose, quarterly allocation is multiple of 2 for drawing interpenetrating sub-samples.
There will not be any revisit in the rural samples.


Outline of the design: A stratified multi-stage design has been adopted. The first stage units (FSU) are 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) are households. As in usual NSS rounds, in the case of large FSUs one intermediate stage unit, called hamlet group/sub-block, will be formed.
Periodic Labour Force Survey
4 Note on sample design and estimation procedure
1.3.7 Sampling Frame for First Stage Units: The list of latest available Urban Frame Survey (UFS) blocks is considered as the urban sampling frame. List of 2011 Population Census villages (Panchayat wards for Kerala) constitutes the rural sampling frame. Since the duration of rotational panel is of two-year, the urban sampling frame once updated incorporating the changes made in the current phase of UFS will remain unchanged for two years. Similarly the rural sampling frame with changes, if any, for urbanisation of village(s) will remain unchanged for two years. After completion of every two-year period, the frames will be updated for incorporating the changes likely to occur during this period. When next Population Census details will be available, the new frame will be used only when UFS blocks for all newly declared Census Towns and Statutory Towns are available for preparation of sampling frame, as the new list of census villages will not include those villages which will be considered as urban areas. ......


1.)State/UT level sample size will be allocated between two sectors in proportion to population as per Census 2011 with double weightage to urban sector in general. Within each sector of a State/UT, the respective sample size has been allocated to the different strata (in the case of urban areas) and strata/ sub-strata (in the case of rural areas) in proportion to the population as per Census 2011. Urban allocations at stratum level have been adjusted to multiples of 8 with a minimum sample size of 8 (for 4 panels, each of size multiple of 2). Rural allocation for each stratum is also multiple of 8 with minimum sample size of 8 (for 4 quarters, each of size

2). For special stratum formed in rural areas of Nagaland as discussed in para 1.3.8, 16 FSUs will be allocated.
1.3.10.2 It may be noted that quarterly allocation of FSUs is same for an NSS state-region although 25% of the urban FSUs rotate over the quarters according to the rotational scheme. However, quarterly allocation of urban FSUs for FOD regions and FOD sub-regions may vary over the quarters since new FSUs entering the sample according to the rotational scheme may or may not belong to the same FOD region or FOD sub-region.