Labour Force Survey 2007-2008

Sample Design
Universe: The universe for Labour Force Survey consists of all urban and rural areas of the four provinces of Pakistan defined as such by 1998 Population Census, excluding Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Northern Areas, Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and military restricted areas and protected areas of NWFP. The Population of excluded areas constitute about 3% of the total population.

Sampling Frame: Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS) has developed its own sampling frame for urban areas. Each city/town is divided into a number of enumeration blocks. Each enumeration block is based on 200 to 250 households on the average with well defined boundaries and maps. The list of enumeration blocks as updated through Economic Census 2003-04 and the list of villages/mouzas/dehs of 1998 Population Census have been taken as sampling frame. Enumeration blocks and villages are considered as Primary Sampling Units (PSUs) from urban and rural domains respectively.

Stratification Plan Urban Domain: Karachi, Lahore, Gujranwala, Faisalabad, Rawalpindi, Multan, Sialkot, Sargodha, Bahawalpur, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Peshawar, Quetta and Islamabad are considered as large cities. Each of these cities constitutes a separate stratum, further sub-stratified according to low, middle and high income groups based on the information collected in respect of each Enumeration Block at the time of demarcation/ updating of urban area sampling frame.
Remaining Urban Areas: After excluding the population of large cities from the population of respective ex-administrative division, the remaining urban population of exadministrative division from provinces is grouped together to form another stratum called other urban. Thus each ex-division in remaining urban areas in the four provinces constitutes a stratum.
Rural Domain: Each administrative district in the Punjab, Sindh and NWFP is considered an independent stratum whereas in Balochistan, each ex-administrative division constitutes a stratum.

Sample Design: A stratified two-stage sample design has been adopted for the survey.
i) Selection of primary sampling units (PSUs): Enumeration Blocks in urban domain and mouzas/dehs/villages in rural are taken as Primary Sampling Units (PSUs). Sample PSUs are drawn with probability proportional to size (PPS) method. In urban domain, the number of households in an enumeration block as updated in 2003-04 through Economic Census and respective population of 1998 Census for a stratum is considered as measure of size.
ii) Selection of secondary sampling units (SSUs): The constituent households of sample PSUs are taken as Secondary Sampling Units (SSUs). A specified number of households i.e. 12 from each urban sample PSU, 16 from rural sample PSU have been selected with equal probability using systematic sampling technique with random a start.

Sample Size and Its Allocation: Keeping in view the variability of characteristics, population distribution and availability of field resources, a sample of 18912 households have been considered appropriate to provide reliable estimates of key labour force characteristics. The entire sample of households (SSUs) has been drawn from 1347 Primary Sampling Units (PSUs) out of which 660 are urban and 687 are rural. As urban population is more heterogeneous therefore, a higher proportion of sample size is allocated to urban domain. In order to get reliable estimates, a higher proportion of sample has been assigned to NWFP and Balochistan in consideration to their smallness. After fixing the sample size at provincial level, further distribution of sample PSUs to different strata in rural and urban domains in each province is made proportionately.