a 1.99 Severamente húmedo

Day-to-day accounting of the available labour time (in terms of ‘half-day’ units) of persons classified under the categories employed and unemployed (labour force) is done according to the current weekly status concept separately for each of the seven days period of reference. (This was referred to as weekly labour time disposition in the 27th round.) By adopting this procedure of accounting of labour time for the last seven

available for work for part of the day while pursuing economic activity in the remaining part of the day or may even utilise either a full

or half of a day for non-economic activities, the daily accounting of labour time on each day of the reference week is made in terms of ‘intensity’ of such activities expressed in quantitative terms, such as, ‘full’ or ‘half’. Utilisation of 4 hours or more in one activity qualifies a person to be considered as pursuing the activity with full intensity and utilising less than 4 hours in one activity qualifies a person to be considered as pursuing the activity with half intensity. In view of operational convenience, the chance of one person having more than two activities on a day has been ignored for taking account of the weekly labour time utilisation. Thus, on any particular day, a person can pursue either only one activity with full intensity or two activities with half intensity each.

In assigning intensity for an activity on a particular day, if a person had worked at least one hour (but less than 4 hours), the activity of work would get half intensity and the other activity (seeking / available for work or engagement in non-economic activity) the remaining half intensity for the day. But the person who had not worked even one hour but was available for work at least for one hour (but less than 4 hours), the activity of being available for work gets half intensity and the other activity (non-economic) gets the remaining half intensity for the day. In the case of persons engaged in self- employment, such as a doctor, a stationary or peripatetic trader or vendor, a free-lance artisan or a carpenter or a mason, the conventions to be followed while assigning intensities to their work are given below:

(i) A doctor sitting in his chamber for 4 hours or more, no matter whether he / she examined and prescribed medicine for a single patient or not, would get full intensity of work.

(ii) A stationary or peripatetic trader or vendor moving around in his professional rounds for 4 hours or more would also get full intensity of work, whatever little business is done by the person.

(iii) Time spent on any ancillary activity relating to the actual activity of production of goods or services by the self-employed is considered as time spent on ‘work’.

[Rounds 55, 50, 43, 38, 32 & 27] In some of the earlier rounds such as the 9th, 10th and 14th through 22nd, the accounting of the utilisation of weekly labour time had been done by collection of data on the number of hours worked and number of hours available for work on each day of the reference week and extra hours available for work over the entire week. A person though at work on a day might be in a position to offer himself for work for some extra hours at normal rate of remuneration for that job without getting overworked. Such hours were considered as ‘extra hours available for work’. The following conventions were, however, followed in deciding the ‘number of extra hours available for work’:

(i) The ‘normal duration of work’ to be used as basis for calculation of ‘extra hours available for work’ is the ‘duration of work’ laid down by law or in collective agreements or the duration of work which may be normal

employment in that occupation, or branch of economic activity or region concerned.

(ii) The specified number of hours of work on a day was to be taken as 8 in case of those employed in organised enterprises and as 10 for others.

(iii) A person who was at work for number of hours of work on a day equal to or more than the ‘normal duration of work’ in the occupation or a specified number where such ‘normal duration’ was not known, was not considered as available for extra hours on that day.

(iv) If the sum of the number of ‘hours at work’ and the number of ‘extra hours available for work’ on a day exceeded the ‘normal duration’ or specified number of hours, the number of extra hours to be considered as available on that day was given by the ‘normal duration’ or ‘specified number of hours’ minus the number of hours at work.

(iv) For each of those days on which a person was not at work and was seeking or available for work, the number of ‘extra hours available for work’ was taken as equal to 10.

In the 11th to 13th rounds, the different activities on any day for a person were given a label of ‘full’ intensity (if pursued for three-fourths or more of normal working hours for the activity concerned) or ‘half’ intensity (if pursued for more than one-fourth but less than three-fourths of normal working hours) or ‘nominal’ (if pursued for less than one-fourth of normal working hours). While taking daily account of the activity, the initial step taken was to uniquely categorise a person under any one of the four major categories - (i) employed at work, (ii) employed not at work, (iii) unemployed, and (iv) out of labour force. When more than one activity became relevant for a person on a day, the activity category for that day was determined according to the priority order which was the same as the order in which the categories are listed above. The category ‘employed at work’ always got the highest priority even though the intensity for that category was either ‘half or ‘nominal’. But when a person was labelled as belonging to any one of the last three categories listed above, the intensity recorded for each of such categories was always ‘full’.

For the ‘Rural Labour Enquiry’ in the 19th and 29th rounds and for the “Agricultural Labour Enquiry’ in the 11th and 12th rounds, however, the various activities pursued by a person during the reference week were listed and the number of days spent on these activities during the week with ‘full’ intensity, ‘half intensity arid ‘nominal’ intensity were accounted.

While from the 27th round onwards, the weekly labour time disposition was accounted only for persons in the ‘labour force’, in the 25th round, the information on the day-to-day labour time disposition was obtained for all persons. But in the rounds prior to 25th, such information was collected only for employed persons.

contingencies necessitating temporary absence from work, and (iii) unpaid helpers who have assisted in

the operation of an economic activity in the household farm or non-farm activities, constitute working persons. These are persons who are classified under any one (or two, in case of current daily activity status) of the 10 categories under the activity statuses of working or being engaged in economic activity (See paragraph 4.2.2 above).

[Rounds 55, 50, 43, 38, 32 & 27]