Why new jobs report is not comparable with old ones

NEW DELHI: The Standing Committee on Labour Force Statistics said on Friday the change in criteria from monthly per capita expenditure to education levels made it impossible to compare the periodic labour force survey (PLFS) with the employment-unemployment surveys of earlier years.

“In view of this, the PLFS needs to be seen as a new series for measuring employment and unemployment on an annual basis,” the statistics office said.



It said that with the rise in education levels in the economy and rise in household income levels, the aspiration levels of educated youth have also risen. “Thus they may no longer be willing to join the labour force or work force requiring low skills and low remuneration,” the panel said in a note, adding that a decision to use education levels was based on the fact that the education levels in the economy have risen due to various policy interventions like the Right to Education Act.



“The PLFS results give a distribution of educated employed and unemployed youth across the country, which can be used as a basis for skilling of youth to make them more employable by industry,” the NSO said.

It said that there are various facets to the employment and unemployment scenario and no single data source is complete by itself. “These data sets need to be supplemented by data from other sources so as to collectively give a holistic picture of the overall employment market,” the panel said.