Periodic Labour Force Survey to give age-disaggregated data

New Delhi: The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) will provide age-disaggregated NEET (not in employment, education and training) data as part of the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) from next month.

This will facilitate better estimation of the population in the NEET cohort among youth and adults, aiding the Ministry of Skills Development and Entrepreneurship in designing more effective and evidence-based interventions, minister of state (independent charge) for statistics and programme implementation Rao Inderjit Singh wrote in a letter to skills development minister Jayant Chaudhary last month. ET has seen the letter.

Minister Chaudhary had in February written to Singh, urging him to include this data in PLFS saying there is a pressing need to disaggregate, or break down, NEET statistics by age group.


“This data segmentation will be instrumental in understanding the challenges faced by different age cohorts, particularly in tailoring skill development programmes and interventions for our youth and adult population,” Chaudhary wrote in the letter.

This, he said, would have multiple benefits including designing targeted skilling and reskilling programmes for specific age-groups, identifying vulnerable age groups more prone to being NEET, tracking the effectiveness of existing policies and aligning national skills development goals with sustainable development goals on decent work and economic growth.

In his response to Chaudhary, Singh said the expert committees of the National Sample Survey recommended inclusion of this information in the PLFS schedule from July 2025.

This includes adding two questions in PLFS to capture people’s engagement in training and to expand the coverage of the status of current attendance question in PLFS by collecting the same information from population up to 59 years of age, he said.