New approaches to modular time use measurement: Harnessing national labour force surveys for the measurement of unpaid care work (International Labour Organization)

2023 marks a decade since the 19th International Conference of Labour Statisticians (ICLS) adopted a new resolution on international standards concerning “statistics of work, employment, and labour under-utilisation”. The new standards signified a major step change in the measurement of productive activities in official statistics and provide a strong conceptual framework and attendant reference definitions to underpin the production of statistics on own use provision of services / unpaid domestic and care work (UDCW) in national labour force surveys (LFS). However, measurement and analysis of UDCW remains something of a specialised field and presents distinctive measurement challenges, not routinely encountered in household sample surveys.  In this paper, we present recent work to operationalise the 19th ICLS standards to enhance the visibility of UDCW within national labour statistics and to support analysis of gender-based inequalities in divisions of paid and unpaid work, and total work time. Such data have relevance for a wide range of public policy areas, especially when collected alongside data on labour force participation and employment. We report on ongoing work to operationalise the standards over a three-year programme of international and mixed-methods piloting, developed by the ILO, with the support of Data 2X, and in partnership with national statistics offices and research institutes in different regions.