Periodic Labour Force Survey 2025: Earnings aren’t rising for large groups of Indian workers

Last week, the National Statistical Office (NSO) released its annual report of the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) for 2025. It differs from earlier PLFS reports in its coverage and sampling design.The PLFS has been in existence since 2017, yielding annual reports for rural and urban areas along with quarterly reports for only urban India. This survey was a departure from the erstwhile Employment and Unemployment Survey (EUS).

For the first time, we had a rotational panel, with households being revisited for four consecutive quarters. The quarterly estimates were based on this rotational sample and were only for urban areas. These changed in January 2025, with the PLFS adopting a different sampling strategy, wherein a panel of households was surveyed and then revisited for four consecutive months, a shift from the practice of quarterly revisits.

In addition, the rotational panel scheme was extended to rural areas. This allowed the release of monthly estimates of employment and unemployment for both rural and urban areas. To align with international practices, the NSO also changed the reference period for its annual reports from the agricultural year (July-June) to the calendar year.

The changes in sampling design meant that the sample sizes were now almost 2.5 times those of earlier PLFS surveys. Fortunately, there are no major changes in the conceptual framework for estimating people’s employment characteristics or earnings from employment, making these broadly comparable with earlier estimates. The monthly series is now available for a sufficiently long period, with the most recent one available for February.