By how much did the Female Labour Force Participation Rate increase from 2017-18 to 2022-23, according to the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) ?

Question

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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.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) 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) 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) 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.

Concept: 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.

State PCS 2024 Q80 — Economy PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q80 — Economy PYQ with Answer