Interviewer instructions
Economic Activity: For Persons 12 Years and Over
P - 19 What was [name]mainly doing in the last 7 days?
5. Under this question you have to determine the economic activity category to which the person belongs as shown in paragraphs 3 and 4 above. Use the codes as shown in the questionnaire. The reference period in this question is the last 7 days and all persons who will fall under categories 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 will be treated as the currently economically active population (Labour Force).
Working for Pay or Profit (Code 1)
6. We define a person as working if he or she performed some work for pay or profit. Payment may be either in cash, in the form of goods or services or in any combination of these.
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Examples:
a. A person employed by someone on fixed monthly income or weekly or daily wages.
b. A person who is paid by an employer on the basis of piece work.
c. A person running his/her own business such as a marketeer, a hawker, a cobbler, a tinsmith, a bottle-store operator, a grocery store owner, etc.
d. Two (or more) partners running a business.
e. A farmer who tills his own farm, with or without the help of other persons.
f. A farm labourer who is paid partly in cash and partly in terms of farm produce.
g. A person who works in a hotel and gets his wages partly in cash and partly in terms of board and lodging.
h. Some students manage to find a job during school holidays and might be working during the reference period. These should be classified as working.
7. Persons who had a job and would normally have worked for pay or profit or return in kind but were: (a) prevented from working by temporary illness, bad weather, industrial dispute such as a strike or a lock-out, on suspension and; (b) all persons who had got a new job but had not yet reported for work, are to be classified as working.
8. Since a person may work for some time and then stop for a period, we shall define a specific reference period during which he may have worked on a regular basis in order to classify him as working or not.
9. A person will be classified as working if he/she did any work for pay, profit, or family gain any time during the preceding week for a period equal to at least one working day.
By 'preceding week' we mean seven days immediately before the day of enumeration.
10. For people in agricultural and allied operations the following activities will constitute work during the preceding week for a period equal to at least one working day:
i. Agriculture: growing of crops, fruits and vegetables, and raising of poultry and livestock.
ii. Fishing and hunting.
iii. Forestry: Collecting or cutting wood, charcoal burning, gathering of honey and beeswax from trees, gathering of mushrooms, caterpillars, etc. and collecting wild fruits, etc. for sale or own consumption
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11. Generally, housewives doing only household duties of looking after their own family are not to be regarded as working. Therefore, do not include housewives who do not have paid employment or who do not work regularly in a family business or on a family farm as working. However, if a housewife is having paid employment or works on a family farm or a family business she is then to be regarded as working. Similarly a housewife who looks after another family and is paid for her work in cash or kind is to be regarded as working.
On Leave (Code 2)
12. This code is for persons who had a job and would normally have worked for pay or profit or return in kind but were on paid or unpaid vacation or study leave.
Unpaid work on household holding or business (Code 3)
13. This code is for persons who performed unpaid work during the reference period on a household holding or business.
Unemployed and Seeking Work (code 4)
14. This code is for persons who sought a job any time during the preceding week. This will include people who:
i. registered at an employment exchange;
ii. went to possible employers to ask for a job;
iii. wrote a letter or applied for a job;
iv. asked friends, relatives, neighbours, etc. to help them find a job;
v. made any effort to start business e.g opening a market stall, clearing a piece of land for an agricultural activity etc.
Not Seeking Work but Available for Work (Code 5)
15. This code is for persons who were not working but indicate that they would like to have a job but are not sure that there is any job available, or who imagine that they are over qualified, or who just say "Where can I get employment?"
Fulltime Housewife/Homemaker (Code 6)
16. This code is for those females or males who are neither working nor seeking work because they are just attending to household duties (housewives or homemakers).
Full-time Students (Code 7)
17. This code is for those persons who are full-time students and were not in any employment during the reference period.
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Not Available for Work for Other Reasons (Code 8)
18. This code is for people who were not seeking work and were not housewives or homemakers, during the reference period. This includes those who may not want to work, pensioners, beggers, prisoners, vagrant, gamblers, etc.
