Results of 2022’s labour force survey expected in March

The Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) is expected to release its Labour Force Survey (LFS)-2022 by the end of March this year, according to a top official of the planning ministry.

The government survey provides data on a quarterly basis on the overall scenario of the country's labour market, including employment and unemployment status of the population.

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It also provides estimates of the structure of employment, time-related underemployment, non-economic activities, non-conventional forms of work, volunteer work and the key labour market indicators in Bangladesh, according to the BBS.

"We have conducted the LFS survey from January to December last year," said Shahnaz Arefin, secretary to the statistics and informatics division of the planning ministry recently.

"We hope we can deliver our survey's preliminary results by the end of March this year," she said.

The BBS, the lone government agency for compiling data, conducted the survey on a sample of 30,816 households from 1,284 primary sample units across the country.

Contacted, Aziza Rahman, project director of the LFS-2022, said the questionnaires used in data collection and the concepts relevant to this survey were of a global standard.

"A new and innovative disability module has been introduced in the 2021-22 LFS questionnaire to incorporate data in this area especially," she said.

In addition, the migration module has also been incorporated as per International Labour Organization (ILO) guidelines, she said.

Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) labour market indicators pertaining to goals 5 and 8 are incorporated in this survey through which it will be possible to provide data of nine SDG indicators from this survey, she added.

Moreover, from this survey, the recruitment costs and income of Bangladesh's migrant workers will also be generated through specified modules.

The target population of this survey was 15 years and older living in the sampled households in order to obtain estimates on many socio-demographic variables classified by sex, age, educational attainment, occupation and industry, according to the BBS.