Hoping for faster data collection and tabulation to help get an almost real time sense of hiring trends, the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) is moving from paper questionnaires to tablets for the cross country quarterly employment survey.
“We have already put out a tender for nearly 800 tablets, which will be used for data collection. The tablets will also have in-built data validation rules to speed up the process. We want to ensure that results of the survey are released quickly,” said a senior government official, adding that this would be the first time NSSO would be using tablets for its data collection.
Typically, NSSO surveys are carried out over at least a year’s time and the detailed report of the survey takes at least one more year to be compiled.
But given that employment trends can change in a matter of months, the government is keen to put out the results of the quarterly Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) at the earliest.
The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, which is the nodal authority for the NSSO, has already issued a tender to purchase 743 tablets for “canvassing the schedules of enquiry” for the PLFS.
To tide over the manpower paucity of the NSSO, the Ministry is also hiring over 700 field staff on contract including 612 field investigators to carry out the survey.
The long in planning PLFS will measure employment and unemployment trends across the country in both quarterly and annual surveys.
At present, the lack of frequent and regular estimates on employment and unemployment in the country is considered a major handicap by policymakers and private sector analysts alike, who find it difficult to calculate the impact of policies on the real-time job market.
The Ministry is hoping to launch the survey next month. “Initially, the plan was to start it from January 1, but as there is still some preparation to do, we will launch it later in the month,” said the official.
According to the proposal, the quarterly survey will only be conducted in the urban areas and will cover over 6,000 urban blocks. The annual PLFS will report on urban and rural areas and will cover more than 8,000 villages.
“The sample size for the PLFS is the same as the quinquennial employment and unemployment survey of the NSSO,” said the official.
However, the Ministry will only carry out the quarterly survey on a pilot basis at present. It will also not release the data immediately as it would be the first full scale exercise and may require some time.