Current Daily Status (CDS) Unemployment
The current daily status approach to measuring unemployment seeks to ascertain the activity status of an individual for each day of the reference week. It reports time disposition of an individual on each day of the reference week. This means that in addition to recording the activity being pursued, time intensity is also recorded in quantitative terms for each day of the reference week.
Following is the criteria used in assigning time intensities and determining activity status:
- For recording time disposition of activities pursued by a person, an intensity of 1.0 is given if activity is done for ‘full day’ and 0.5 is given if an activity is undertaken for ‘half day’.
- A person is classified as employed for the ‘full day’ if he has worked for 4 hours or more during the day.
- If a person is engaged in two or more activities for more than 4 hours a day, then he is assigned two economic activities on which he spent relatively longer time and intensity of 0.5 is given to each of them.
- If a person works for more than 1 hour but less than 4 hours h/she is classified as ‘working’(employed) for ‘half day’ and ‘seeking/available for work’ (unemployed) or ‘neither seeking nor available for work’(outside the labour force) for the other half of the day depending on whether he was ‘seeking/available for work’ or not.
- If a person is not engaged in any work even for 1 hour during the day but was ‘seeking/available for work’ for more than 4 hours a day, then h/she is classified as ‘unemployed’ for ‘full day’. However if the person is reported ‘seeking/available for work’ for more than 1 hour but less than 4 hours, then h/she is classified as ‘unemployed’ for ‘half day’ and not in labour force for other half of the day.
- If a person is neither ‘working’ nor ‘seeking/available for work’ even for half a day is classified as being outside the labour force for the entire day.
As can be seen from above, this approach is associated with persons-days and not to persons. The person-days in employment for each day of the reference week is aggregated to arrive at person-days of employment and unemployment (daily status) in the economy.
The person-day unemployment rate is calculated as the ratio of person-days in unemployment to the person-days in the labour force (i.e. person-days in employment plus person days in unemployment).