India - Employment and Unemployment: NSS 61st Round, Schedule 10, July 2004 - June 2005

Although it may be theoretically possible that on a particular day of the reference week, a person may have any number of activities, the particulars relating to two activities identified on the basis of priority cum major time criterion need only be considered for making entries in this column. Thus, on a day, a person may either have only one activity with 'full' intensity or two activities with 'half' intensity for each. If the activity is pursued with intensity 'half' on a particular day, the entry will be 0.5 against that activity and if that is pursued with intensity more than half, 1.0 will be recorded against that activity in the relevant columns (7) to (13). Generally, an activity, which is pursued for more than 1 hour but less than 4 hours is considered to have been pursued with 'half' intensity. If it is pursued for more than 4 hours, the activity is considered to have been pursued with 'full' intensity. However, for some persons, less than four hours of work daily is their normal working hours for the work or profession. In such cases he will be considered to have worked with 'full' intensity.

4.5.3.8 The decision whether the intensity to be recorded for an activity will be 0.5 or 1.0 has to be taken by the investigating staff making careful probes into the actual situation obtaining for the person on a particular day. Mere declaration made by the informants, that less than four hours of work daily is their normal working hours for the work or profession, should not be the basis for recording the intensity as 1.0. In the case of a cultivator, a village artisan or a small trader, it should not be presumed that a few hours on a day, say during the lean periods of the year, is their normal work, and the intensity 1.0 need not necessarily be recorded for them. Since this particular block of the schedule is meant for recording the information on periodical or seasonal under-utilisation of available labour time, careful probes about the nature of work performed by a person during the day has to be made before recording the relevant entries.

To illustrate, in so far as the daily activity pattern of a person is concerned, the following seven different situations can be visualized for a person on a single day:
(i) he/she may be engaged fully in one economic activity;
(ii) he/she may be engaged in two different types of economic activities;
iii) he/she may be partly engaged in economic activity and for the rest of the day he may be seeking or available for work and at the same time may or may not be doing some non-economic activities;
(iv) he/she may be partly engaged in economic activity and during the rest of the day he is not available for work and may be doing some non-economic activities;
(v) he/she may be available for work for the entire day;
(vi) he/she may be available for work for part of the day and for the remaining part he may not be available for work and may be pursuing some non-economic activity and
(vii) he/she may be fully engaged in non-economic activities.

Which of the status codes are to be entered in column (4) will depend on whichever of the above situations are obtaining for a person on the different days of the reference week. The investigator is to first ascertain the exact situation from the informant and will then record the appropriate status code or codes, as the case may be, in this column using the priority-cum-major time criterion. The relevant codes to be used for recording the status are already given. The following illustrations may be noted for general guidance.

(a) A person found to be engaged in domestic duties should not be categorised 'engaged in domestic duties' (code 92) if the person reports that he/she has also been available for work concurrently.

(b) A person engaged in regular salaried/wage employment but currently not at work will be assigned code 71 or 72 irrespective of whether he is engaged in any other 'economic or non-economic' activity.

(c) Unpaid apprentices will be treated as 'students' while paid apprentices will be treated as employees.

(d) 'Free collection for sale' will be treated as self- employment.

Columns (7) to (13): Intensity of activity: For each activity recorded in column (3), the intensity with which the particular activity is performed on the different days of the reference week will be recorded in quantitative terms 'half' or 'full' in these columns. As described earlier, for each activity listed in column (3) either one 'full' intensity or two 'half' intensity may be assigned to a person on any one of the seven days of the reference week. For a particular activity, the recording of entries in columns (7) - (13) should start from column (7) which is provided for recording the intensity of that activity on the seventh day of the reference week, i.e., the day preceding the date of survey. Similarly, the intensity of that activity on the sixth, fifth and earlier days of the week will be recorded in columns (8), (9), (10), (11), (12) and (13) respectively. If the intensity of an activity is 'full' on a particular day, '1.0' will be recorded in the relevant column. On the other hand, if the intensity is 'half', the entry will be '0.5'. If that particular activity is not pursued on some other days of the reference week, the corresponding columns provided in the block for those days will be left blank against that activity. Thus, for each day, for a person, there will be either only one entry with intensity 1.0 in any one of the lines or two entries with intensity 0.5 each in any two of the lines. Procedure for recording different activities and the intensities of the activities on different days are explained in the Flow charts 2 and 3.
For determining the various activities pursued by a person during the reference week and their intensities, the following thumb rule may be adopted:

(a) If a person had worked or was employed, that is, if he was engaged in any one or more of the activities 11-72 for four hours or more on a day he would be considered 'working' or 'employed' for the whole day and assigned the one or two out of the different work activities on which he devoted relatively long time. In the former case, intensity will be 1.0 and in the latter cases, 0.5 for each of the two activities recorded.

(b) A person, who had worked for 1 hour or more but less than 4 hours on a day, would be considered 'working' for half day and for the other half he would be considered either 'seeking or available for work', i.e., 'unemployed' (code 81 or 82) or as 'neither working nor available for work', i.e., 'not in labour force' (91-98) depending on whether or not the person was seeking/available for work. The person will be assigned the relevant work status code (11-72) with 'half' intensity and non-work status code 81 or 82 if 'unemployed' and any one of the relevant codes 91-98 if 'not in labour force', with 'half' intensity. If the nature of work is such that, (when employed in a full day) he/she works for less than 4 hours, full intensity will be given (e.g, a doctor may practice for 3 hours only on each day).

(c) If a person had not worked even for an hour on the day but had sought work or was available for work for four hours or more, he/she would be considered unemployed for the whole day and assigned the code 81 or 82 as the case might be with 'full' intensity. But if he/she sought work or was available for work for one hour or more but less than four hours, he/she would be considered 'unemployed' for half day and assigned the activity status code 81 or 82 with 'half' intensity and 'not in labour force' with 'half' intensity for the other half of the day, for which the relevant code (any one of the codes 91-98) would be assigned.

(d) A person not so considered 'employed', or 'unemployed' either for 'full' day or 'half' day as shown in (a), (b) or (c), would be given activity codes 91-98 with intensity 'full' or two of them with each having intensity 'half', as the case may be.
A few special cases are stated below regarding assigning of intensity.

(a) In the case of a person engaged in self-employment, such as a doctor, a stationary or peripatetic trader or vendor, a freelance artisan or a mason or a carpenter, etc. the following may be kept in view while recording entries on intensity.

(i) A doctor sitting in his chamber for 4 hours or more, no matter whether he examined and prescribed medicine for a single patient or not, intensity 1.0 should be recorded.

(ii) For stationary or peripatetic vendor or trader moving around in his professional rounds for 4 or more hours, intensity 1.0 should be recorded whatever little business is done by the person.

(iii) For recording intensity (entries 1.0 or 0.5) in columns (7) - (13) in the cases of masons or carpenters in their professional rounds, similar procedure is to be adopted.

(b) In the case of regular or casual salaried or wage employees, the activity beyond the normal working hours need not be considered for recording entries in these columns. On the other hand, if a person pursues two economic activities of duration, say 4-5 hours each, both are to be recorded with 0.5 intensity for each. In the case of self-employed persons, time spent on any ancillary activity relating to the actual activity of production of goods or services, will also be considered as time spent on 'work'. In this connection, it may be noted 'exchange labour' will be considered as 'work' performed in 'self-employed' capacity.

Consult flow chart 2 ( as given in the Booklet for instruction to field staff ) : Broad steps for filling cols. 1 to 13 of block 5.3 for each member.

Note: 1. An activity relating to work will be identified on the basis of the status-cum-industry-cum-operation in the rural areas and on the basis of status-cum-industry in the urban areas. An activity relating to other than work will be identified on the basis of status only both in rural and urban areas.

2. On a day, a person will be considered to have been engaged in one activity with full intensity (1.0) or in two activities with half intensity (0.5). Of the many activities, two activities to be chosen based on priority-cum-major time criterion.


Consult flow chart 3 ( as given in the Booklet for instruction to field staff ): Determination of intensity of activity (for col. 7 - 13)