Behind the numbers

India's policymakers need more timely unemployment data

Last week, the National Statistical Office released the Annual Report of its Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), covering the period between July 2019 and June 2020. This period included the second quarter of the calendar year 2020, when the Indian economy was reeling from a stringent lockdown meant to contain the spread of Covid-19. Yet the difficulties that the pandemic and consequent lockdown imposed upon the broader Indian workforce did not appear, at first glance, to be adequately reflected in the PLFS. The headline that was widely reported was that the 2019-20 PLFS overall saw a reduction, rather than an