From the latest PLFS Monthly Bulletin for October 2025, the estimates of Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR), Worker population Ratio (WPR) and Unemployment Rate (UR) in Current Weekly Status (CWS) for rural, urban and rural + urban combined among male, female and person of age group 15 years and above at all-India level are given in the Table below:

LFPR, WPR and UR (in per cent) according to Current Weekly Status (CWS) for rural, urban and rural+urban sectors among male, female and person of age group 15 years and above for October, 2025
sector	LFPR in CWS			WPR in CWS			UR in CWS
	male	female	person	male	female	person	male	female	Person
(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)	(7)	(8)	(9)	(10)
rural	78.4	38.4	57.8	74.8	36.9	55.2	4.6	4.0	4.4
urban	75.3	25.4	50.5	70.8	22.9	47.0	6.1	9.7	7.0
rural+urban	77.4	34.2	55.4	73.4	32.4	52.5	5.1	5.4	5.2
Source: Monthly Bulletin, PLFS, October, 2025

The sampling design of PLFS has been revamped from January 2025 to address the requirement of high frequency labour market indicators with enhanced coverage from PLFS. Salient aspects of the change in the sampling methodology of PLFS are given below:

Frequency: The revamped PLFS sample design has enabled generation of monthly estimates of key labour market indicators viz., LFPR, WPR and UR at the all-India level following the Current Weekly Status (CWS) approach. The Monthly Bulletins for the months of April 2025 to October 2025 each have been released. Upto December, 2024 PLFS provided quarterly labour market indicators for the urban areas only. In the revamped PLFS, quarterly estimates of employment-unemployment indicators are available for both rural and urban areas and hence for the entire country. Quarterly Bulletins for April-Jun 2025 and July-September 2025 have been released.

Coverage: PLFS covers all the States/UTs across the country. In the revamped PLFS sample design, district has been made the primary geographical unit, called basic stratum within a State/UT separately for rural and urban sectors for selecting FSUs for most part of the geography covered. In the remaining parts, NSS region has been made the basic stratum. This will ensure presence of sample observations from most of the districts in the PLFS sample, which will improve the representativeness of the estimates generated. Further, sample size has been increased to 22,692 First Stage Units (FSUs – sample villages/ urban blocks/ sub-units) from 12800 FSUs surveyed upto December 2024 and Sample households have also been increased from 8 to 12 households. The enhanced sample size is expected to provide reliable estimates of labour market indicators with improved precision.

Timely Dissemination: The results of PLFS are being released in a timely manner as per the timelines prescribed in the Advance Release Calendar (ARC) available on the website of MoSPI.

The ongoing PLFS is being carried out as per NIC 2008. MoSPI has released the NIC 2025 recently in the month of November 2025. The NIC 2025 introduces a new 6-digit coding structure, in place of the 5-digit structure of NIC 2008 and represents the latest updated national standard for classifying economic activities in India which provides a comprehensive and contemporary framework for all economic activities, capturing the rapid transformation of Indian economy driven by technological advancement, innovation, and the emergence of new sectors. This enables better representation of emerging activities and enhancement of accuracy, comparability and policy utility of labour market and economic statistics.

This information was given by the Minister of State (Independent Charge) of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Minister of State (Independent Charge) of the Ministry of Planning and Minister of State in the Ministry of Culture Rao Inderjit Singh in Lok Sabha today.

Periodic Labour Force Survey 2025 expands sample and provides monthly LFPR, WPR and UR estimates nationwide. The PLFS was restructured from January 2025 to generate monthly CWS estimates of LFPR, WPR and UR nationwide, with Monthly and Quarterly Bulletins released and dissemination aligned to the Advance Release Calendar. The sampling design now uses districts as primary strata in most areas, expands FSUs and increases households per FSU to improve representativeness and precision for rural and urban estimates. The survey adopts NIC 2025's six digit coding to better capture emerging economic activities and enhance comparability and policy relevance of labour statistics.