Labour Force Survey 2004, September

Statistics South Africa uses a rotating panel methodology for the labour force survey. The rotating panel methodology involves visiting the same dwelling units on a number of occasions (in this instance, five at most). After the panel is established, a proportion of the dwelling units is replaced each round (in this instance, 20%). New dwelling units are added to the sample to replace those that are taken out.

Enumeration Areas (EAs) that had a household count of less than twenty-five were omitted from the census 2001 frame that was used to draw the sample of Primary Sampling Units (PSUs) for the new Master Sample. Other omissions from the Master Sample frame included all institution EAs except workers, hostels, convents and monasteries. EAs from census 2001 were pooled in two stages, before and after sampling. Before sampling the criterion that was used to pool EAs was that they should contain a minimum of one hundred households. However, during listing it was discovered that there were discrepancies between the information on the database and what was on the ground.

Therefore, in the second stage of pooling, EAs that were found to have less than sixty dwelling units during listing were pooled. The Master Sample is a multi-stage stratified sample. The overall sample size of PSUs was 3000. The explicit strata were the 53 district councils/metros (DCs). The 3000 PSUs were allocated to these DCs using the power allocation method. The PSUs were then sampled using probability proportional to size principles. The measure of size used was the number of households in a PSU as calculated in the census. The sampled PSUs were listed with the dwelling unit as the listing unit. From these listings systematic samples of dwelling units per PSU were drawn. These samples of dwelling units form clusters. The size of the clusters differs depending on the specific survey requirements. The LFS uses one of the clusters that contain ten dwelling units.