Niti Aayog mulls using GSTN data to conduct job surveys

After revamping the old tax regime, the government is mulling to give a fillip to its outdated employment data collection methods conducted by National Sample Survey Office (NSSO). Give that current surveys conducted by the Laobur Bureau and NSSO are not up-to-date and do not provide an accurate estimation of the employment numbers, the Centre has entrusted Niti Aayog to overhaul the sample for job surveys.

According to sources, the Niti Aayog is mulling to suggest the government to use goods and service tax network (GSTN) databank for conducting employment surveys.

"Given that NSSO's surveys are too backdated that it cannot be utilised for assessing the real picture of job creation. The task force headed by Niti Aayog vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya is set to suggest carrying out both household and enterprise surveys with data on GSTN to be taken as a sample for part of the latter survey to estimate the job market," the sources said.

"The prime objective of the task-force is to renovate all the systems of data collection and disbursement of data. It would help in closely monitoring the employment data, which is not with the case of surveys of NSSO. As per the practice, the data collected by NSSO used to be published after 10 years, which stand of no use," the sources said.

"The task-force would also make it very simple to understand the employment data, which was not with the data of NSSO as releases a mix data. The task-force would also segregate different data and improve the reach of the survey by modernising the service tools," the sources said, adding that the panel is likely to submit its report to the Prime Minister soon.

The task force would recommend using registrations and enrollments on GSTN as a sample size for enterprise survey, to be conducted annually. So far over 6.5 million assesses have registered on GSTN, sources said.

However, high-frequency data — monthly or quarterly — might be conducted on the sub-set of GSTN survey. The ministry of statistics and programme implementation and the labour ministry will work out modalities for this survey, sources said.

As per the Employment-Unemployment Survey of 2011-12 (the latest available), India had a workforce of 47.36 crore, of these, 49 per cent or 23 crore workers were in agriculture and 24 crore in industry and services. According to the latest Economic Census 2013-14, which covers all non-agricultural establishments, there are only 13.1 crore workers in all and of these, only 2.77 crore were in enterprises with 10 or more workers, which is just 6 per cent of the total workforce of 47.36 crore.