Labour demand survey gets underway this month

Since labour force supply should be consistent with labour demand for rapid growth, the Department of Census and Statistics (DCS) is seeking private sector cooperation to conduct its annual labour demand survey this month, it said in a statement yesterday.  

A sample of 3,500 establishments and enterprises has been selected using appropriate sampling techniques to conduct this survey. The officers of DCS will visit the establishments selected to collect detailed data on labour demand. 

Information will be collected on the occupations for which the largest number of vacancies exist. 

This includes education and professional qualifications necessary for those occupations, types of contributions being made by the state and private institutions offering courses leading to those qualifications, projected future job demand and current salary scales for each job category.    

DCS will be collecting such information in accordance with the provisions of the Statistics Ordinance and the data collected from the selected establishment will be treated confidentially. Moreover, the department stated that the information will be used only for statistical purposes and the information provided thus shall not be revealed to any party under any circumstances.

Therefore, the DCS requested all the establishments or heads of establishments to provide accurate information to the officers of the DCS who will visit selected establishments during July to successfully conduct this survey and contribute towards the rapid development of the country. 

The department in its latest Annual Survey of Industries 2015 released last month said 20,326 industrial establishments function in Sri Lanka. Most of them belong to the manufacturing subsector (16,835) followed by 3,162 industrial establishments in the mining and quarrying subsector, 133 industrial establishments in the electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply subsector and 196 industrial establishments in the water supply, sewerage, waste management and remediation activities subsector. 

According to the findings of the survey, 1,122,711 persons were found to be engaged in the industry sector in the country. The highest number (1,063,086) of persons was engaged in the manufacturing sector industries. Of this 27,311 persons were involved in the mining and quarrying subsector. 

Number of persons engaged in industries related to electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply were reported as 20,180 and the number of persons engaged in water supply, sewerage, waste management and remediation activities are reported as 12,134.