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Social Infrastructure and Employment 365

provided skill development training programmes on (i) up-skilling/re-skilling (ii) short term
training programme (iii) long term training programme and (iv) entrepreneurship development
program. During the year 2021-22, a target has been set to provide skill development training to
approximately 50,000 persons of the target groups.

TRENDS OF EMPLOYMENT

10.47 The COVID-19 pandemic and the restrictions on the movement of individuals and
economic activities to curb its spread significantly impacted livelihoods across the globe. This
section analyses trends in labour market and the impact of COVID-19 on employment using
annual and quarterly data by Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS). PLFS is the comprehensive
Government dataset used to analyse the trends in labour market. However, this data is available
with a large lag . The latest update of quarterly PLFS urban sector is available up to March
16
2021 and annual PLFS data available up to 2019-20. In the absence of high frequency data on
17
labour market indicators, other proxies such as subscriptions of EPFO scheme and demand for
work under MGNREGA, have been used to analyse the more recent trends in employment in
urban and rural sectors.
Trends in Urban employment using Quarterly PLFS data

10.48 Before the outbreak of COVID-19, the urban labour market had shown signs of
improvement in terms of labour force participation rate (LFPR), Worker population ratio
(WPR) and Unemployment rates (UR). However, the nation-wide lockdown imposed in late-
March, 2020 adversely impacted the urban labour market. In the first quarter of 2020-21, the
unemployment rate for urban sector rose to 20.8 percent. The LFPR and WPR in urban sector
also declined significantly during this quarter (Table 6).

Table 6: Labour market indicators for Urban sector (age: 15 & above) at CWS
(in percent)

Survey Quarters LFPR WPR UR
Year
July-Sept, 2019 47.3 43.4 8.3
Oct-Dec, 2019 47.8 44.1 7.8
2019-20
Jan-March, 2020 48.1 43.7 9.1
April-June, 2020 45.9 36.4 20.8
July-Sept, 2020 47.2 40.9 13.2

2020-21 Oct-Dec, 2020 47.3 42.4 10.3
Jan-March, 2021 47.5 43.1 9.3

Source: Quarterly PLFS reports
Note: LFPR is defined as the percentage of population in the labour force. Labour force comprises of persons who
were either working (employed) or seeking work (unemployed). WPR is defined as the percentage of employed
persons in the total population. UR is defined as the percentage of unemployed persons in the labour force.

16 Quarterly PLFS for urban sector has a lag of about 9 months and do not cover the rural sector. Other countries viz., Japan, Australia, United King-
dom and USA, publish their quarterly labour force surveys in less than two months of time and monthly data within a month from reference period.
17 The activity status determined on the basis of a reference period of last 7 days preceding the date of survey is known as the current weekly status
(CWS) of the person