India - Employment and Unemployment : NSS 66th round, Schedule 10, July 2009 - June 2010

Whether engaged in any work in a subsidiary capacity (yes-1, no-2): For each member of the household listed in this block, it has to be ascertained whether he/she worked in a subsidiary capacity during the 365 days preceding the date of survey or in other words if he had any subsidiary economic status. A person will be considered to have worked in the subsidiary capacity if he/she has worked for a minimum period of 30 days, not necessarily for a continuous period, during the last 365 days, and for them code 1 will be recorded in this column. Otherwise, code will be 2.

The identification of those working in a subsidiary capacity will be done as follows:

(i) For example, a person categorised as working and assigned the usual principal activity status as own account worker may also be engaged for a relatively minor time, but not less than 30 days, during the reference year as casual wage labour. In such a case, he will be considered to have worked also in a subsidiary capacity, i.e., having a subsidiary economic status which is different from the principal economic status. A person may be own account worker in trading for a relatively longer period and simultaneously also engaged in agricultural production for a relatively minor time, say for at least 30 days. In such a case, the usual principal status will be own account worker in trade and usual subsidiary economic status will be own account worker in agriculture.

(ii) Similarly, persons categorised as 'unemployed' or 'not in labour force' on the basis of relatively long time criterion might have pursued some economic activity for relatively minor time, say for at least 30 days, during the year (as in the case of persons 'B', 'D' and 'F' in the example cited earlier). In such cases, they will be treated as having subsidiary economic activity and code 1 will be recorded in column (7).

It may be stated again that engagement in work in subsidiary capacity may arise out of two situations:

(i) a person may be engaged in a relatively longer period during the 365 days in economic (non-economic activity) and for a relatively minor period, which is not less than 30 days, in another economic activity (any economic activity). 30 days of work need not necessarily be for a continuous period but may be distributed over the last 365 days.

(ii) a person may be pursuing an economic activity (non-economic activity) almost throughout the year in the principal status and also simultaneously pursuing another economic activity (any economic activity) for relatively shorter time in a subsidiary capacity. In such cases, since both the activities are being pursued throughout the year and hence the duration of both the activities are more than 30 days, the activity which is being pursued for a relatively shorter time will be considered as his/her subsidiary activity.

Differentiation between usual principal economic activity and usual subsidiary economic activity will be made by considering activity status and industry at 2-digit level of NIC-2004. Thus, while for a person with two or more economic activities pursued at different activity status, one of the economic activity will be considered as usual principal economic activity on the basis of major time criteria, another activity will be considered as usual subsidiary economic activity. On the other hand, if a person pursues two or more economic activities in the same activity status but if the industry at 2-digit level of NIC-2004 are different, then the person will be considered to have different usual principal and usual subsidiary economic activity.