Labour survey changes planned to gauge gig, unpaid house work

Why in the News

India’s main employment survey is moving from counting only work done for pay to also asking who works through a digital platform and who does unpaid work at home. The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) plans these changes in the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) from January, and has invited feedback by November 7.

What is the PLFS, and what does it miss?

1. What it is: The PLFS is a household survey that asks members what work they did, and counts a person as employed on the basis of what they did in the preceding seven days.
2. Why it matters: It is the official source of India’s employment and unemployment rates, so policy rests on the activities its questions recognise as work.
3. What it misses: Platform work is irregular and often done alongside another job, and work done for one’s own household earns nothing, so a question about paid work captures neither.
4. The takeaway: Work that was invisible to the official count becomes countable, which decides whether it is recognised in policy at all.

What will households be asked about platform work?

1. Platform work in the last year: Households will be asked whether any member worked with a digital platform over the last 365 days. Eg. Ola, Uber, Zomato, Amazon, Urban Company.
2. Nature of the work: They will be asked what goods or services the member provides, and whether the member works for more than one platform.
3. Motives and difficulties: They will be asked what prompted the member to take up platform work, and the main challenges faced in it.
4. Already in trial: Data on digital platform workers, a subset of gig workers paid per task rather than a regular wage, has been collected on a trial basis since January 2026.

What will it ask about unpaid household work?

1. Own use or for sale: Members will be asked whether what they make and the work they do is for their own consumption or for sale. Eg. Fetching water, cooking, cleaning, childcare, helping elders.
2. Whether they want paid work: Members will be asked whether they sought work for pay or profit in the previous 30 days, and whether they want such work now.
3. Why they did not look: They will be asked the main reason for not looking, with family and household responsibilities among the options offered.
4. Why the PLFS carries it: The Time Use Survey, which records how people spend their day, is not annual, so the labour survey is being used to find the same thing.

Why does counting this work matter?

1. The scale of unpaid work: The 2024 Time Use Survey found that females above six spend over four and a half hours a day on unpaid domestic and caregiving work, against 37 minutes for men.
2. Choice or obligation: Experts had asked MoSPI to test whether women do care work by choice or because they see it as their responsibility.
3. A workforce still growing: A NITI Aayog report estimated gig and platform workers will rise to 2.35 crore by 2029-30, the base figure for any social security cover.

Challenges

1. Recall over a year: Asking members to remember a whole year of irregular platform work invites error, since few can recall it accurately.
2. Secondary work missed: Platform work done alongside a main job can go unreported when a member names only the principal activity.
3. No time diary: Asking whether work is for own use records that it happened, not how many hours it took, which is what a time diary measures.
4. Break in the series: New questions change what the survey measures, so readings before and after the revision are not strictly comparable.

Way Forward

1. Publish the concordance: MoSPI should publish how the new categories map to the old ones, so users can compare across the revision.
2. Align with the welfare register: The Ministry of Labour and Employment should match the platform work categories to e-Shram, the national database of unorganised workers, so the count supports benefit delivery.
3. Report the trial first: MoSPI should release the trial’s platform worker findings before finalising the questionnaire.

Conclusion

The revised questionnaire is out for comment before the next survey round. What to watch is whether the unpaid work questions survive the comment window, and whether the platform worker estimates are published as a regular series.

Matching Previous Year Question

“No direct PYQ traced in the provided files. Thematic PYQ: [2023, GS3, 15 marks] Most of the unemployment in India is structural in nature. Examine the methodology adopted to compute unemployment in the country and suggest improvements.”