Economic activity
20. Did [the respondent] do any type of work for pay, profit, or home use for at least 1 hour in the past 7 days?
145. Column A18-A25
These questions apply only to persons aged 12 and years and over. If the person is less than 12 years of age, then when you reach column A16 you should put dashes in the shaded areas for columns A16-A31 and proceed to the next listed person in the household.
149. Column A21: Current economic activity
The current economy activity refers to the activities which occurred during the last 7 days. Note: 7 days means week ending yesterday. Thus it is different from the usual activity, which is related to the last twelve months. Therefore it is important that you explain this to the respondent.
Q. Did the respondent do any type of work for pay, profit, or home use for at least 1 hour in the past 7 days?
The same economic and non-economic rules apply to current economic activity. However for current activity a person is taken as employed if they have done any work in the reference period. Any work is taken as a minimum of one hour.
This is an important question, and therefore you must remind the respondent of the list of work activities. You must go through the complete list again with the respondent. Remember this time you are asking about work activities during the last seven days, even if they lasted for only one hour. Remember to include those temporarily absent from their work.
Particular emphasis should be on unpaid work in family business. For example, if any member of the household has a small shop it is quite likely that other household members will spend some time working in the business.
A person is considered to be temporarily absent from work if he/she is on paid leave, sick leave, or he/she is not at work because of strike and he/she is definite that he/she will return to work or if he/she is temporarily absent up to one month, from his/ her business/agricultural activity which continued to operate during his/her absence, and the business/agriculture is being run by any household member or someone on his/her behalf.
Note that the activity must be continuing in his/her absence for agriculture/business. If there is no activity because of the agricultural off-season, then no activity is continuing and the person is not temporarily absent.
Response code 1 "Yes" will cover the following:
Response code 2 "No":
There are some activities which respondents do not consider work. In order to minimize on the under enumeration of the economically active, there is a need for further probing for those whose response is No in question A21. For example, if "no", has the respondent worked at lands or cattle post?