India - Employment and Unemployment Survey, July 1993 - June 1994, NSS 50th Round

Activity status: It is the activity situation in which a person is found during a reference period which oncerns with the person's participation in economic and non-economic activities. According to this, a person will be in one or a combination of the following three statuses during a reference period :
(i) working or being engaged in economic activity (work)
(ii) being not engaged in economic activity (work) and either making tangible efforts to seek 'work' or being available for 'work' if the 'work' is available and
(iii) being not engaged in any economic activity (work) and also not available for 'work'.Activity statuses mentioned in (i) & (ii) above are associated with 'being in labour force' and the last with 'not being in the labour force'. Within the labour force activity status (i) is associated with 'employment' and that of (ii) with 'unemployment'.

The usual activity status relates to the activity status of a person during the reference period of 365 days preceding the date of survey. The activity status on which a person spent relatively longer time (major time criterion) during the 365 days preceding the date of survey is considered the principal usual activity status of the person. To decide the principal usual activity of a person, he/she is first categorised as belonging to the labour force or not, during the reference period on the basis of major time criterion. Persons thus adjudged as not belonging to the labour force are assigned the broad activity status 'neither working nor available for work'.

Instructions to the Field staff,Section Five (Attached as Manual-2 in the external resources)

For each of the members, the principal usual activity status will be recorded in this column. In the first instance the broad principal usual 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 principal usual activity status will be one of the three categories viz. 'employed'(working), 'unemployed' (available for work) or 'not in labour force' (neither willing nor available for work). It is to be noted that in deciding this, only the normal working hours available for pursuing various activities need be considered, and not the 24 hours of a day. Identification of this broad usual status category is explained below. The broad principal usual 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 not available for any economic activity i.e., the persons will be first classified as those in the labour force and those not in the labour force depending on in which of these two statuses 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 principal usual status as one of the three viz. employed, unemployed and out of labour force.