Context: The Labour Bureau is all set to launch its five major surveys, including on migrant and domestic workers, across the country by April 1 as two out of three mandated pre-testings of the studies yielded "encouraging and positive results".
The five surveys are

1. All-India Survey of Migrant Workers: To study the kind of employment related migration undertaken by workers, the details of working and living conditions faced by them and impact of COVID 19 on their world of work.
2. All-India Quarterly Establishment based Employment Survey (AQEES): The survey would provide the employment estimates for establishments employing 10 or more workers as well as those with employing 9 or less workers. This highly useful establishment based survey will provide crucial data on the changes in employment situation across the selected sectors on a quarterly basis.
3. All-India Survey on Domestic Workers: The survey will be instrumental in estimating the number of domestic workers in the country for the first time ever. Some additional specific objectives are to collect data on incidence and characteristics of households with domestic workers and the average number of domestic workers engaged by different types of households.
4. All-India Survey on Employment generated in Transport Sector: Estimates for employment generated in the transportation sector in the country will be generated using this survey.
5. All-India Survey of Employment Generated by Professionals: The survey will help in the estimation of employment generated by professions such as lawyers, medical professionals, cost accountants and chartered accountants.

Developed by

• These surveys have been developed and designed by Labour Bureau under the technical guidance of an expert group chaired by Prof S. P. Mukherjee.
• The Labour Bureau is being aided by BECIL, a Government of India Enterprise under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to provide the IT support.

Significance

These surveys will be path breaking in their “Paperless” data collection approach due to use of tablet PCs in the field work, these tablets are equipped with latest software application.

• Use of latest technology is likely to reduce the survey completion time by at least 30 - 40%.
• In another first these surveys will be conducted in major regional languages.
• These surveys will plug-in the data gap on various aspects of labour and employment and will aide evidence-based policy making processes.