The Department of Census and Statistics (DCS) Sri Lanka has released the results of the Sri Lanka labour force survey for the first quarter of 2017 (January, February, March).
Labour Force Survey (LFS) is designed to measure the levels and trends of employment, unemployment and labour force in Sri Lanka. This survey has been conducted quarterly, since the first quarter of 1990. LFS 2017 is the 37th survey of the survey series. The Department of Census and Statistics (DCS) has released labour force statistics for the first quarter of 2017, based on a sample of 6,430 housing units covering the whole country.
The working-age of a person in Sri Lanka is defined as the age 15 years and above. The estimated working-age household population for the 1st quarter of 2017 is about 15.7 million. This shows an increase of 0.3 million compared to the 1st quarter of 2016. This may be due to the increase in net migration and internal movements.
The total working age population who are employed or unemployed during the reference week is identified as the economically active population or the labour force of the country. The estimated economically active population is about 8.6 million in the 1stquarter of 2017, of which 62.7% are males and 37.3% are females.
Labour force population expressed as a percentage of the working-age population (age 15 years and above) is the Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR). The survey results reveal that the overall LFPR for the first quarter of 2017 is 54.7% and this is recorded as 75.1% and 37.6% for males and females respectively.
Persons, who worked at least one hour during the reference period, as paid employees, employers, own account workers or contributing family workers are said to be employed. The estimated employed population for the1st quarter of 2017 is about 8.2 million, of which, about 45%are engaged in the Services sector, 28% in the Industry sector and 27%are in the Agriculture sector. The highest employment share is reported for the Service sector and the same pattern can be seen for both males and females. In this quarter, the lowest employment share is reported for the Agriculture sector. The survey also reveals that 68.1% of the employed population work more than 40 hours per week.
During the reference period of the survey, persons who did not work and looking for work and taken actions to find a job in the prior 4 weeks of the survey, also ready to accept a job given a work opportunity within next two weeks are said to be unemployed. The proportion of unemployed population to the total labour force is defined as the unemployment rate.
The estimated unemployment rate for the first quarter of 2017 is 4.1%. DCS stated that a bulletin prepared with the information of the labour force estimates for the 1st quarter of 2017 has been published in the DCS website : http://ift.tt/2wLkVvt
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