India - Employment and Unemployment, July 2004 - June 2005, NSS 61st Round

For each of the members, the usual principal activity status will be recorded in this column. In the first instance, the broad usual principal activity of the person will be identified based on the various activities pursued by the person during the reference period of last 365 days adopting a 'relatively long time (or major time)' criterion, not necessarily for a continuous period. The broad usual principal activity status will be one of the three categories viz. 'employed' (working), 'unemployed' (available for work) or 'not in labour force' (neither working nor available for work). It is to be noted that in deciding this, only the period normally available in a day for pursuing various activities need to be considered, and not the 24 hours of a day.
Identification of broad usual principal activity status: The broad usual principal activity status will be obtained on the basis of a two stage dichotomous classification depending on the major time spent. Persons will be classified in the first stage into (i) those who are engaged in any economic activity (i.e. employed) and / or available for any economic activity (i.e., unemployed) and (ii) who are not engaged and also not available for any economic activity (i.e., not in labour force). Thus, the persons will be first classified as those in the labour force and those not in the labour force depending on in which status, out of these two, the person spent major part of the year. In the second stage, those who are found in the labour force will be further classified into working (i.e., engaged in economic activity or employed) and seeking and/or available for work (i.e., unemployed) based on the major time spent. Thus, we can obtain the broad usual principal status as one of the three viz. employed, unemployed and out of labour force. Flow chart 1 explains the procedure for determining the broad usual principal activity status.


Flow Chart 1: Determination of Broad Usual Principal Status


The following examples will help in clarifying the procedure for identifying broad usual principal activity status of individual.


number of months
labour force not in usual principal remarks
person employed unemployed labour force activity status
A 5 4 3 employed
B 4 5 3 unemployed employed in subsidiary status (SS)
C 4 3 5 employed
D 4 1 7 not in labour force employed in SS
E 3 3 6 employed
F 1 0 11 not in labour force employed in SS


Detailed usual principal activity status: With the broad activity status identified for a person, detailed activity categories will be assigned on the basis of relatively longer time spent on a detailed activity. For example, suppose person A, in the example given above worked in household enterprises without hiring labour for 3 months and worked as casual labour for 2 months, then his usual principal activity status would be, worked in household enterprise (own account worker).


The detailed usual principal status activity codes are as given below:

activity status code
worked in hh. enterprise (self-employed) as own account worker ...11

worked in hh. enterprise (self-employed) as employer ...12

worked as helper in hh. enterprises (unpaid family worker) ...21

worked as regular salaried/wage employee ...31

worked as casual wage labour : in public works ...41

in other types of work ...51

did not work but was seeking and/or available for work ...81

attended educational institutions ...91

attended domestic duties only ...92

attended domestic duties and was also engaged in free collection of goods (vegetables, roots, firewood, cattle-feed etc) sewing, tailing, weaving, etc. for hh. use ...93

rentiers, pensioners, remittance recipients, etc. ...94

not able to work due to disability ...95

others (including begging, prostitution, etc.) ...97

Codes 11, 12, 21, 31, 41 & 51 refer to the 'employed', 81 to the 'unemployed' and the remaining viz. 91 to 97 refer to the 'not in labour force'. For children of age 0 - 4 years, code 97 may be given.

Some special cases for determining usual principal activity status are listed below:

(i) It is to be noted that availability for work being more of a status than an activity, a person being available for work may well be engaged in one or more of the activities denoted by codes 91 to 97. In all such cases except those engaged as students (code 91), persons will be categorised as 'unemployed' if he/she reports to be available for work for a relatively longer period, inspite of his/her being engaged simultaneously in a non-economic activity. But, if a person who is available for work is reported to have attended educational institution more or less regularly for a relatively longer period during the preceding 365 days, further probing as to whether he will give up the study if the job is available is to be made before considering him as 'unemployed'.

(ii) Again, it also needs to be emphasised that the procedure to be followed in ascertaining the activity status of a domestic servant who is a member of the employer's household is different from that adopted for other members of the household. It may be noted that engagement in domestic duties by such household members is not considered economic activity as defined for the survey. On the other hand, although a domestic servant staying in the employer's household and taking food from the common kitchen is, by definition, a member of the employer's household, he/she is also engaged in domestic duties in return for wages in cash and/or kind. Thus, as a special case, domestic duties pursued by a domestic servant will be considered as an economic activity and the activity status code as is applicable will be assigned to him/her.

(iii) Carpenters, masons, plumbers, etc., who move from place to place in search of work and carry out the work on a contract basis (not on wage basis) whenever work is available, will be considered as 'own-account worker'. But if such persons are working on a wage basis under a contractor, they will be considered as employee.