PLFS overhaul: Changing employment patterns and the need for a revised survey design

New Delhi: The Ministry of Statistics has proposed revamping the employment survey conducted regularly to assess labour market statistics. The changes particularly include highlighting gig worker demographics and measuring unpaid activities.

The notice issued by the National Statistics Office (NSO), Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), invites suggestions from policymakers, researchers, academics, as well as the general public regarding the proposed modifications.

India's gig work landscape has expanded in recent years and, according to the government's estimates from January 2026, has grown to account for over 2% of the total Indian workforce. Thus, platform-based work has emerged as a growing segment of employment.

Moreover, a large section of society is engaged in unpaid activities, which may include producing goods for personal use, household and caregiving activities, volunteering, and training activities.

According to ADP Research's People at Work 2026 survey, which included 39,000 adult workers across 36 markets, 24% of workers put in 16 hours or more of unpaid work every week.

Even though the country has an overall literacy rate of 81.1% and unemployment at 5%, data on gig workers and unpaid labour may present a fresh picture of the workforce, including sections of underemployed people.

Thus, the proposed revision of statistics highlights the need to restructure the strategy for analysing India's workforce, its employment patterns, and its engagement in different activities.

The Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) plans to modify its sampling design from January 2027, "when fresh samples for the two-year period 2027-2028 (new Panel 6) will be drawn from an updated sampling frame," the ministry said.

Since the current arrangements did not adequately capture data on digital platform workers, the PLFS would add a separate category for them. As part of this change, questions will be asked in all urban and rural households.

Moreover, new questions have been added to the survey to better measure unpaid activities undertaken by India's workforce aged 15 years or above.

These changes come amid ongoing questions about the quality of employment in the country and the growing need to understand the changing patterns of employment and the different categories of work.

The government had previously revised the PLFS sampling design to provide monthly, quarterly and annual estimates and enable the estimation of indicators at the sub-state level from January 2025.