Abstract
This paper studies gross labour market flows and determinants of labour market transitions for urban Indian workers using a panel dataset constructed from Indian Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data for the period 2017–18 to 2019–20. Longitudinal studies based on the PLFS have been hampered by data problems that prevent a straightforward merging of the 2017–18 and 2018–19 data releases. In this paper, we propose and validate a matching procedure based on individual and household characteristics that can successfully link almost all records across these 2 years. We use the constructed dataset to document a number of stylised facts about gross worker flows and to estimate the effects of different individual characteristics and work histories on probabilities of job gain and loss.
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Notes
Given that each person is followed over four quarters, age in years should not change by more than 1. However, examination of the reported age distribution shows significant bunching around multiples of 2 and 5 which suggests imprecise reporting of age. Since the purpose of this step is only to prevent incorrect linking, we keep a wider acceptance range for reported age.
The self-employment category includes unpaid family workers whose incomes are recorded as zero and whose income can only increase when they move to another state.
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I am grateful to the two anonymous referees, seminar participants at Centre for Sustainable Employment (Azim Premji University) and Ambedkar University Delhi, and to Ishan Anand and Anamitra Roychowdhury for very helpful comments. An earlier version of this paper was circulated as the working paper https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.05482.
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Bhattacharya, J. Indian Urban Workers’ Labour Market Transitions. Ind. J. Labour Econ. 66, 471–494 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41027-023-00434-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41027-023-00434-9