The Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) is a concept and a continuous household survey mechanism that serves as India's principal source of official employment and unemployment data. It was launched by the National Statistical Office (NSO), under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), in April 2017. The PLFS was created to solve the problem of infrequent data, as it replaced the quinquennial (five-yearly) Employment-Unemployment Surveys of the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), the last of which was conducted in 2011-12. The shift was based on the recommendation of an expert committee chaired by S. Amitabh Kundu, aiming to provide more frequent, policy-relevant labour data.
The PLFS works by generating estimates for three key indicators: the Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR), the Worker Population Ratio (WPR), and the Unemployment Rate (UR). It uses two distinct reference periods: the Usual Status (US) approach, which records a person's activity over the preceding 365 days, and the Current Weekly Status (CWS) approach, which uses the preceding seven days. Initially, the PLFS provided annual reports for both rural and urban areas and quarterly bulletins only for urban areas.
The survey has undergone significant recent changes, with a revamp announced from January 2025. This change expanded the scope to provide monthly estimates of key labour market indicators at the all-India level and extended quarterly estimates to cover both rural and urban areas. Furthermore, the annual PLFS results shifted from the agricultural year (July–June) to the calendar year (January–December) to align with global reporting standards. The PLFS connects to broader economic analysis, feeding into the Economic Survey and assessments by NITI Aayog.