The number of persons who remained unemployed for a major part of the year is called

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Correct — A, Usual status unemployment. India's employment-unemployment surveys — the old NSSO quinquennial rounds and today's Periodic Labour Force Survey — classify a person's activity against three different reference periods, and the phrase 'major part of the year' is the signature of the first of them. Under the usual status approach the reference period is the 365 days preceding the survey, and a person is assigned the activity on which he or she spent the relatively longer time, the 'major time criterion'. Someone who was in the labour force but without work for the major part of those 365 days is counted as usually unemployed. Because it needs joblessness to persist across most of a year, this measure captures chronic or open unemployment and yields the lowest of the three unemployment estimates.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) Current Daily Status uses a reference period of just the seven days preceding the survey, and records activity half-day by half-day for each of those days. It is designed to capture the intensity of work — a person can be counted as partly employed and partly unemployed within the same week — so it measures underemployment, not year-long joblessness. It normally gives the highest unemployment estimate of the three.  (c) Current Weekly Status also uses a seven-day reference period. A person is treated as employed if he or she worked for even one hour on any day of that week, and as unemployed only if there was no such work but the person sought or was available for work. A one-week window cannot describe someone unemployed for the major part of a year.  (d) This would only be right if no listed measure matched the definition. The 'major part of the year' wording is taken almost verbatim from the usual status concept, so option (a) does match and 'none of the above' fails.

Concept: Unemployment in India is not one number but three, because the same person can look employed or unemployed depending on the window you look through. Usual Status (reference period 365 days) is split into Usual Principal Status, based on the activity pursued for the major part of the year, and Usual Subsidiary Status, which picks up an activity done for 30 days or more outside the principal one; together they form the widely quoted UPSS estimate. Current Weekly Status uses a seven-day window with a one-hour work criterion. Current Daily Status records each half-day of those seven days. Since a longer reference period gives a person more chances to be recorded as working, the rates almost always run in the order CDS greater than CWS greater than UPSS. The Periodic Labour Force Survey, launched by the National Statistical Office in 2017-18, publishes usual status and current weekly status estimates and replaced the old five-yearly NSSO employment rounds.

State PCS 2019 Q112 — Economy PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2019 Q112 — Economy PYQ with Answer