Labour Force Survey 2001-2002

Sampling Frame: Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS) has developed its own sampling frame for urban areas. Each city/town has been 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 during 1995 and the list of villages/mouzas/dehs of 1998 Population Census have been taken as sampling frame. Enumeration blocks and villages have been considered as Primary Sampling Units (PSUs) from urban and rural domains respectively.

Stratification Plan Urban Domain: Large size cities i.e. Karachi, Lahore, Gujranwala, Faisalabad, Rawalpindi, Multan, Sialkot, Sargodha, Bahawalpur, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Peshawar, Quetta and Islamabad have been considered as self-representing cities (SRC). Each of these cities constitutes a separate stratum which has been further substratified 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 self-representing cities from the population of respective defuncted administrative division, the remaining urban population in each administrative division of a province has been grouped together to form another stratum called other urban. Thus each defuncted administrative division in remaining urban areas in all the four provinces constitutes a stratum.

Rural Domain: In rural domain, each administrative district in the Punjab, Sindh and NWFP has been considered an independent and explicit stratum whereas in Balochistan province each defuncted 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 domain have been taken as Primary Sampling Units (PSUs). In the urban domain, sample PSUs from each ultimate stratum/sub-stratum have been selected with probability proportional to size (PPS) method of sampling scheme. In urban domain, the number of households in an enumeration block as per Quick Count Record Survey, 1995 and population of village/deh/mouza according to Population Census, 1998 have been considered as measure of size.
ii) Selection of secondary sampling units (SSUs): Households within sample PSUs have been 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 (with random start) technique.

Sample Size and Its Allocation: Considering the variability of characteristics for which estimates are to be prepared, population distribution and field resources available, a sample size of 18928 sample households have been considered appropriate to provide reliable estimates of key labour force characteristics at the desired level. The entire sample of households (SSUs) has been drawn from 1348 Primary Sampling Units (PSUs) out of which 660 are urban and 688 are rural. As urban population is more heterogeneous therefore, a higher proportion of sample size has been allocated to urban domain. Similarly, NWFP and Balochistan being the smaller provinces and to get reliable estimates, a higher proportion of sample has been assigned to these provinces. After fixing the sample size at provincial level, further distribution of sample PSUs to different strata/sub-strata in rural and urban domains in each province has been made proportionately.

Sample Covered: All enumeration Blocks in urban areas and mouzas/dehs/villages in rural areas were enumerated. The number of sample households (18,890) enumerated is less than the estimated sample size (18,928) due to non-contact and refusal cases in urban and rural areas.