BPSC 70th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 80 of 143

Correct — A, From 23.3% to 37%. The figures come from the Periodic Labour Force Survey, the annual survey conducted by the National Sample Survey Office and its successor the National Statistical Office under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. PLFS began in 2017-18, replacing the old five-yearly Employment-Unemployment Survey, and 2017-18 is therefore both the base year of the series and the base year of this comparison. On the usual-status measure for persons aged 15 years and above, the all-India female labour force participation rate stood at 23.3 per cent in 2017-18 and 37.0 per cent in 2022-23 — a rise of 13.7 percentage points in six years, which the Economic Survey 2023-24 sets out in its chapter on employment and skill development. The rise is overwhelmingly rural: rural female LFPR moved from about 24.6 per cent to about 41.5 per cent, a jump of roughly 16.9 percentage points, while urban female LFPR moved only from about 20.4 per cent to about 25.4 per cent. That rural-urban split is the most important thing on the card, because it is what a follow-up question will test, and because it is also the key to reading the number honestly: much of the increase is in self-employment and unpaid work in household enterprises, particularly in agriculture, rather than in regular salaried jobs. The number is a real and large change in measured participation; it is not by itself evidence of a comparable rise in paid employment.

• (b)From 25.3% to 35% — Both ends are wrong, and it is designed to look like a rounded, plausible version of the truth — a starting point two points too high and an endpoint two points too low. A candidate who remembers only 'from the mid-twenties to the mid-thirties' will take it.
• (c)From 20.3% to 30% — Understates the change at both ends, giving a rise of about 10 percentage points instead of the recorded 13.7. It is the option for a candidate who recalls that participation rose by roughly a third and reaches for the roundest available pair of numbers.
• (d)From 23.3% to 33% — The most dangerous of the three, because its starting figure of 23.3 per cent is exactly right — only the endpoint is wrong. Anyone who has stored the base year correctly but not the terminal year has a fifty-fifty choice left between this and the answer, which is precisely the position the examiner wants you in.

Three ratios describe a labour market and they must be kept apart. The Labour Force Participation Rate is the share of the population that is either working or actively seeking and available for work. The Worker Population Ratio is the share actually working. The Unemployment Rate is the share of the LABOUR FORCE, not of the population, that is seeking work and not finding it — which is why unemployment can fall simply because people stop looking and drop out of the labour force altogether. PLFS measures these on two reference periods: usual status, which looks back over the preceding 365 days, and current weekly status, which looks back seven days; usual-status figures are the ones normally quoted in headline comparisons. India's female LFPR has historically been among the lowest in the world for a country at its income level, and explanations offered include rising school and college enrolment among young women, income effects that withdraw women from distress work as household incomes rise, unpaid care work, safety and mobility constraints, and the way surveys count women's work inside household enterprises. The post-2017-18 reversal is therefore treated as significant, and also as needing careful reading.

This is a four-figure recall item, and it is solvable even by a candidate who remembers only part of the data, provided the part he remembers is the right one. Two options open at 23.3 per cent and two do not; the two that do not can be dropped immediately if you know the base year figure, which is the more commonly quoted of the two. That leaves the terminal figure, 37 per cent against 33 per cent, and here the useful anchor is the headline itself — the rise is usually reported as an increase of about 13 to 14 percentage points, or as female participation approaching two-fifths, which points to 37 rather than 33. A second anchor is the rural figure: rural female LFPR crossed 40 per cent by 2022-23, and an all-India figure of 33 per cent would be too low to be consistent with a rural rate above 41 per cent, since rural India carries the larger share of the population. Note also the agency wording in the stem. The survey is PLFS; the National Sample Survey Office was reorganised into the National Statistical Office in 2019, so 'NSSO' in a 2024 question means the same statistical system under an older name.

• All-India female LFPR on usual status for persons aged 15 and above rose from 23.3 per cent in 2017-18 to 37.0 per cent in 2022-23 — a rise of 13.7 percentage points
• Rural female LFPR rose from about 24.6 to about 41.5 per cent over the same period, a jump of roughly 16.9 percentage points; urban female LFPR moved only from about 20.4 to about 25.4 per cent
• The source is the Periodic Labour Force Survey, launched in 2017-18 by the NSSO under MoSPI, replacing the earlier quinquennial Employment-Unemployment Survey
• The National Sample Survey Office was merged with the Central Statistics Office into the National Statistical Office in 2019, so 'NSSO' and 'NSO' refer to the same statistical system in different periods
• Definitions to keep apart: LFPR counts those working or seeking work as a share of population; WPR counts only those working; the unemployment rate is measured against the labour force, not the population

• Marking option (d) because its starting figure 23.3 per cent is right; the terminal figure is the discriminator
• Treating a rise in LFPR as a rise in paid jobs — most of the increase is in self-employment and unpaid work in household enterprises
• Confusing LFPR with WPR, or reading the unemployment rate as a share of population rather than of the labour force

BPSC asks survey statistics as exact figure-pairs, with distractors built by moving one end of the pair — so a half-remembered number scores nothing and often costs a third of a mark. UPSC almost never asks a bare figure; it asks whether specific statements drawn from a named survey round are correct, which requires knowing the shape of the findings — which state is highest, which share exceeds a half — rather than the decimals.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) in India is conducted by

  • (a)the Reserve Bank of India
  • (b)the National Statistical Office under MoSPI
  • (c)the Labour Bureau under the Ministry of Labour and Employment
  • (d)NITI Aayog

  Answer(b) the National Statistical Office under MoSPI — PLFS began in 2017-18, conducted by the NSSO and now the NSO; the Labour Bureau ran the earlier employment-unemployment surveys of its own.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Labour Force Participation Rate differs from the Worker Population Ratio in that the LFPR also counts

  • (a)persons below 15 years of age
  • (b)persons seeking and available for work but not employed
  • (c)persons engaged only in unpaid household chores
  • (d)persons who have retired from regular work

  Answer(b) persons seeking and available for work but not employed — the labour force is the employed plus the unemployed who are looking for work, while the WPR counts only those actually working.