Time Use Survey as an Opportunity Lost

Context: Gaps in India’s Time-Use survey data will impact Sustainable Development Goal 5.4 and the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO’s) resolution on de?ning work.

An overview of the Time Use Survey(TUS): It provides a framework for measuring time dispositions by the population on different activities.

• Measure time spent on paid and unpaid activities: by men and women including unpaid care­giving activities, volunteer work, unpaid domestic services of a household.
• Provides information on time spent on learning: socializing, leisure and self­care by households.
• Data collection is done in a 24-hour time diary: beginning at 4 a.m. and till 4 a.m. the next day; covered the entire country for the first time.
  • Due to low literacy, the time diary was filled in by interviewers in 30-minute time slots through face-to-face interviews. (in developed countries time-slots are of 10-15 mins only!)
• Significance of TUS: Implementation of various Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) including 5.4 – on unpaid work and also for SDG 1 to 10, including socio-economic concerns of various nations.

Defining “Work” under ILO’s resolution Statistics of Work, Employment and Labour Underutilization 2013:

• Definition: It de?nes “work” as “any ac­tivity performed by persons of any sex and age to produce goods or provide services for use by others or own use.”
• Divided into five categories:
  • Employment (production of goods and services for pay, pro?t or barter);
  • Own use production of goods and services by households;
  • Unpaid trainee work;
  • Volunteer work;
  • Other work (compulsory work per­ formed without pay to produce goods/services for others).

Issues with employment surveys in India:

• Inadequate data collection:
  • Its valuation of unpaid work is inadequate as it values only the labour input and leaves out the capital and technology used.
  • It doesn’t collect the information regarding the assets of a household that includes assets used in domestic services (held by women), vehicles for transportation and consumer durables.
• Designing TUS independent of the ILO’s Resolution: The Standing Committee on Labour Force Statistics that designed the time use survey decided to keep the Resolution out.
• Under-reporting of informal workers: Being frequently intermittent, scattered, temporary, short term or unstable, the informal sector is frequently not reported accurately by the surveys.
  • The TUS collect data only for one or two days per person in a week, while the ILO describes a person as a worker if he/she has spent at least one hour on work in the reference week.

Way Forward: Complement TUS with Employment /Unemployment Survey (EUS): The Expert Committee on the 62nd Round of the NSSO on EUS recommended that a national TUS should follow a EUS.