Broader Labour Survey on cards to capture more data on skilling

The ministry of skills development and entrepreneurship will soon write to the ministry of statistics and programme implementation to expand the scope of the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) as it seeks more comprehensive data on skilling to address the issue of demand-supply mismatch and bring in required policy interventions.

Some of the additions to the PLFS that could be proposed include capturing quality aspects of vocational and technical education along with computing the unemployment rate among youths equipped with vocational and technical training. MSDE wants these modifications to be introduced from next fiscal year as it gears up to prepare a skilled pool of workers to cater to industry demand under the upcoming National Policy for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship 2025.

According to MSDE, work experience and competency level are the key parameters for holistically assessing the impact of skills training and hence even these should be part of the labour force survey.

"The field of training and the economic activity engagements would help in assessing the skill mismatch," the ministry said in one of its presentations to MoSPI recently. MSDE is of the view that while supply side information on skilling is available through multiple surveys, the demand side information is generated mainly from Skills Gap studies, periodically done by the sector skill councils. "Since PLFS is the main data source for indicators like employment, unemployment, education, training, expanding its scope will help in necessary policy interventions to make skilling more aspirational," a senior government official said. The statistics ministry has revamped the PLFS methodology from January 2025. Among the changes, a new addition related to training is a further question on the nature of the certifying body from which vocational/technical training was received.

Data shows that the share of individuals aged 15-59 years who received vocational/technical training rose to 34.7% in 2023-24 from 27.4% in 2022-23. Meanwhile, the share of those without any vocational training declined to 65.3% from 72.6% over the same period.

A recent National Skill Gap Study, jointly done by MSDE and NCAER, projected 392 million jobs in 2026-27 across seven high growth sectors based on IMF growth projections.

As per the report, the key limitation of the Periodic Labour Force Survey is that it only captures job roles at the three-digit National Classification of Occupation (NCO) code, leaving behind workforce in sectors like powerloom and handloom.