{"id":139698,"date":"2021-10-07T20:52:39","date_gmt":"2021-10-07T15:22:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=139698"},"modified":"2021-10-16T12:30:42","modified_gmt":"2021-10-16T07:00:42","slug":"the-recent-qes-estimates-are-unreliable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/the-recent-qes-estimates-are-unreliable\/","title":{"rendered":"The recent QES estimates are unreliable\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Synopsis<\/span><\/b>:\u00a0New Quarterly Employment Survey, its key findings,\u00a0various challenges associated with the survey and the way forward<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Introduction<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h5>\n

Recently, the Ministry of Labour and Employment released the results of a new Quarterly Employment Survey (QES) for April-June 2021 for the organized (formal) sector.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It represents establishments employing ten or more workers.\u00a0The surveyed sectors were manufacturing, construction, trade, transport, education, health, accommodation and restaurant, Information Technology\/Business Process Outsourcing (IT\/BPO), and\u00a0financial\u00a0services.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What are the key findings of the survey?<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h5>\n

First<\/span><\/b>,\u00a0it estimated a growth of 29% in the\u00a0total employment in\u00a0the nine selected sectors\u00a0as compared to\u00a0Sixth Economic Census (2013-14).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Secondly<\/span><\/b>, employment fell post the lockdown on July 1, 2020.\u00a0But\u00a024 lakh jobs\u00a0that was\u00a0lost\u00a0during the lockdown in 2020 came\u00a0back by the\u00a0first quarter of 2021.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What are the various issues\/concerns associated with the survey?<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h5>\n

The new QES will help generate timely employment estimates for the larger units. However, the analysis suffers from various issues and calls for caution in its interpretation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Limited coverage-\u00a0<\/span><\/b>formal establishments account for a small proportion of all non-agricultural establishments (merely 1.66% as per the Economic Census (EC) of 2013-14). Also, a large share of workers (81.3% as per the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS, 2018-19)) worked in the unorganized sector. With its limited coverage, the QES based on data for formal sector enterprises cannot provide a total picture of employment dynamics.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Major deviation from the other reports<\/span><\/b>–\u00a0Data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) showed\u00a0that during April 2020,\u00a0<\/span>12.1 crore\u00a0workers lost their jobs<\/strong>\u00a0(mostly informal workers). 9.1 crore job losses<\/strong> occurred amongst small traders and casual labourers. The unemployment rate by current weekly status in urban areas increased from 9.1%<\/strong> (before the lockdown) to 20.8<\/strong><\/span>%<\/strong> (Post lockdown).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Methodological\u00a0shortcomings<\/span><\/b>– The new QES data suffers from methodological shortcomings like outdated sample frame (QES used EC-2013 sample frame), non-comparability of employment numbers and differences in methods used for gathering the information. Hence, instead of rushing to produce new QES based on outdated sample frame, it was required to wait for the release of the newly updated frame in the EC-2020.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

– Sample frame: The list of units (e.g., persons, households, businesses, etc.) in the survey population<\/em><\/p>\n

Did not include latest units-<\/span><\/b>\u00a0the\u00a0<\/span>new QES has a sample of approximately 11,000 establishments.\u00a0But sample frame implies that\u00a0QES does not include units\u00a0set up after 2013.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Primarily a\u00a0telephonic survey-\u00a0<\/span><\/b>which shows lack of\u00a0verification\u00a0of responses of establishments<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sample collected with a short reference period<\/span><\/b>–\u00a0The questionnaire of the QES asks establishments about employment details for a specific quarter. In contrast, the EC-2013 questionnaire asks establishments about the number of persons working on the last working day prior to the date of\u00a0fieldwork\u00a0in the establishment.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Conceptual problem-<\/span><\/b> in comparing employment numbers of the Economic Census (EC) with the QES. <\/span> Although the former asks questions about the number of persons working in an enterprise, it is not a good instrument for estimating the size of the workforce or for analysing employment trends as the principal objective of the EC is generating a frame, not estimating employment.<\/span><\/p>\n

What is the way forward?<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h5>\n

We need to produce quarterly employment data for selected industries in the organised sector. Simultaneously, we cannot compromise on data quality and its reliability, in a rush to generate high-frequency estimates.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/span><\/b>: This post is based on the article “<\/span>The recent QES estimates are unreliable<\/span><\/b>”\u00a0published in\u00a0<\/span>The Hindu<\/span><\/b>\u00a0on\u00a0<\/span>7th October 2021<\/span><\/b>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Synopsis:\u00a0New Quarterly Employment Survey, its key findings,\u00a0various challenges associated with the survey and the way forward\u00a0 Introduction\u00a0 Recently, the Ministry of Labour and Employment released the results of a new Quarterly Employment Survey (QES) for April-June 2021 for the organized (formal) sector.\u00a0 It represents establishments employing ten or more workers.\u00a0The surveyed sectors were manufacturing, construction,… Continue reading The recent QES estimates are unreliable\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10328,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,9],"tags":[312,768,216,10220,3138],"class_list":["post-139698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-public","tag-employment","tag-energy","tag-gs-paper-3","tag-qes-survey","tag-unemployment","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704734546},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10328"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139698\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}