UPSC Mains 2023 · GS III · Q11 · 15 marks · 250 words

Most of the unemployment in India is structural in nature. Examine the methodology adopted to compute unemployment in the country and suggest improvements.

हिन्दी में

भारत में सबसे ज्यादा बेरोजगारी प्रकृति में संरचनात्मक है। भारत में बेरोजगारी की गणना के लिए अपनाई गई पद्धति का परीक्षण कीजिए और सुधार के सुझाव दीजिए।

Macroeconomic IndicatorsEmployment

How a topper answered the closest question

Toppers wrote this one in a test series: “While unemployment in India is taking different forms and emerging forms of employment are reshaping the labour market, how is the government measuring and tracking employment-related data in the country? What improvements can be made to these methodologies to adequately capture the employment data?”

Shubham SinghAIR 21 · CSE 2025 · 273 wordsTheir whole copy

Opening

With working age population of ~ 100 cr, availability of quality jobs for all becomes imperative for human development, equitable growth, and reaping demographic dividend.

Body · points and prose

Different forms of Unemployment

  1. Structural : due to transitioning of economy from agriculture to service and manufacturing

  2. Seasonal : in sectors such as construct-ion, textiles

  3. Disguised unemployment in agricultu-re as 45% of workforce is producing only 17% GVA

  4. Cyclical unemployment due to tempor-ary downturn in economic activities i.e., mass IT sector layoffs.

Emerging forms of employment

  1. Contractualization of labour force
  2. Gig economy, Platform workers/partners [eg → Zomato delivery partner]
  3. Care economy: entails underpaid/unpaid care work
  4. Freelancing without conventional employee-employer reln
  5. Self-employment, Entrepreneurship [eg → 27% of workforce is self-employed]

How is government measuring & tracking employment data?

  1. Since, 2017 PLFS survey has replaced early 5-yearly Employment-Unemployment Survey (EUS)

  2. PLFS survey collects annual data for rural areas and annual & quaterly data for urban areas

  3. PLFS uses : → Current Weekly Status : activity period of 1 hr → Current Monthly Status : activity period of 1 day → Current Usual Status : activity period of 30 days

  4. Govt. also tracks EPFO data to track formalization

Close · a summary

IssuesSuggestions
1) Does not track skill level/deficit at current work1) Skill census periodi-cally
2) Under-measures unemployment level2) Adopt ILO Standards on definition of employment
3) Lack of sync with other surveys such as HCES Survey3) Data integration, Data Analytics

Employment data should be comprehensive to enable deft policy making.

How toppers approach this question, and more on its topic: open the question.

Toppers’ answers to other close questions

Source: UPSC, Civil Services (Main) Examination 2023, General Studies Paper III, Q11. The paper on upsc.gov.in. Themes and links to toppers’ answers are by UPSC Grade, not by UPSC.