INDIA - Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), Calendar Year 2023 (Jan23 Dec23)

A rotational panel sampling design will be used in urban area. The rotational scheme will be of
two years duration to accommodate the changes in the urban frame in the intracensal 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 in urban areas
will be visited four times – one with first visit schedule and other three with revisit schedule. The
estimates can be given for successive quarters without any break in the series (starting from the
fifth quarter), ensuring a 75% matching between consecutive quarters. Regression based
estimates will not be generated. Instead, usual traditional design based estimates will be
generated. The proposed design aims at generating quarterly estimates of level and change
parameters of some important labour force indicators (LFPR, WPR & UR) based on CWS data
in urban areas and annual estimates of level parameters based on usual status for both rural and
urban areas in the line of employment & unemployment survey of NSS quinquennial round.

Rotational panel design for urban areas

i. The rotational panel will be for two years, where only 25% FSUs of urban annual
allocation will be covered in the first quarter (Panel P41) of the fourth two year panel with
detail listing and canvassing of visit 1 schedule in the selected households; where Pij
indicates the panel belonging to jth quarter of the ith two-year period of rotation.
ii. Another 25% FSUs will be covered in the second quarter (Panel P42) for taking up visit 1
schedule and revisit schedule will be canvassed in the selected households of Panel P41.
iii. A new panel P43 of 25% FSUs will be surveyed in third quarter with visit 1 schedule and
revisit schedules will be canvassed in the households of panels P41 & P42.
iv. In the fourth quarter, households of panels P41, P42 & P43 will be surveyed with revisit
schedule and a new panel P44 with 25% FSUs for visit 1 schedule.
v. In the subsequent quarters of second year of the third two year panel, 75% FSUs (3 panels
– P42, P43 & P44) will be common and an earlier panel (P41) will be replaced by a new panel
(P45) for canvassing visit 1 schedule. This will continue till 8th quarter of the fourth two
year panel.
vi. All the FSUs of the panels P41, P42, ...., P48 (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 P51, P52, ..., P58 selected from the updated frame will be made
ready before commencement of first quarter of fifth two year panel. These panels P51 to P58
will take care of the changes in the urban frame during the intracensal period.
ix. In the ninth quarter (first quarter of fifth two year panel), panel P51 selected from the
updated frame will be introduced and the panels P46, P47 and P48 of the old frame will be
surveyed.
x. This scheme will continue for another 2 years with the introduction of panels P52 to P58
each in one quarter for the subsequent 7 quarters till the end of the fifth two year panel.
xi. Since major changes in the rural-urban frame occurs in the Census years, provision is to be
made to generate estimates without break in the series of estimates considering panels from
pre and post-census frames.

Rural samples

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


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 will be 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 will be adjusted to multiples of
8 with a minimum sample size of 8 (for 4 panels, each of size at least 2).

Rural allocation for each stratum will also be multiple of 8 with minimum sample size of 8 (for 4 quarters, each of
size 2).

It may be noted that quarterly allocation of FSUs will be same for an NSS state-region
although 25% of the urban FSUs will 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.