Current Daily Status(CDS):
The reference periods (i.e. a year, a week and a day) are basically used to describe the period for which the workers are employed in the economy. These periods also help in identifying the nature and extent of unemployment in the economy. For example, NSSO uses the 'Current Weekly Status' (CWS) and 'Current Daily Status' (CDS) of the workers to elaborate the estimates of employment in an average week and an average day respectively.
The CDS criterion, thus, gives the estimate of the extent of underutilisation of the labour force in terms of person-days. In other words, the CDS estimate of unemployment is the most inclusive measure of unemployment made up of open unemployment and visible underemployment. In fact, the difference between the unemployment rates given by CDS criterion and CWS criterion gives the rate of visible underemployment.
The estimate of unemployed person-days given by the CDS criterion divided by 7 can also be interpreted as the estimate of the number of persons unemployed on an average day.
Similarly, these approaches lead to estimates of UPS employment, UPSS employment, CWS employment and CDS employment. The estimate of UPS employment represents the number of persons who are employed for a relatively longer period of time during the reference year, or those who have stable employment. The UPSS criterion adds an additional group of persons to the UPS employed. These are UPS non-workers who have done intermittent work as a subsidiary activity during the reference year. CWS employment refers to those who are employed for at least an hour during the reference week or the number employed in an average week. CDS employment measures the rate of utilisation of the labour force in terms of person-days. While the first three measures overestimate, to some extent, levels of employment because of the way they are defined, the CDS measure gives a closer estimate of these levels.
Creation of employment opportunities depends on the volume and composition of economic activity in the economy, that is, the total output of goods and services in the economy and its structure. The total output of goods and services is called the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Thus, levels of employment in an economy depend on the size and composition of its GDP. Factors that affect this basic relationship are: (i) the availability of capital, (ii) the availability of skills and expertise among the employed persons and (iii) the manner in which capital and labour (the number of employment persons) combine to produce the output of goods and services. In other words, a number of inter-dependent factors like material, financial and human capital, knowledge and technology utilised, productivity of labour and capital and Government policies shape this relationship.