Over 52 million formal jobs were created under EPFO and NPS in four years: SBI Ecowrap

According to the State Bank of India's latest Ecowrap, which cited payroll data from the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) and the National Pension Scheme (NPS), India created 52 million formal jobs in the last four years, 47% of which were first jobs.

As per the analysis of the EPFO payroll data for the previous four years, there were 48.6 million net new EPF members added during FY20 to FY23, whereas 3.1 million new NPS subscribers were added over the same time period.

The report states that during the four-year period under consideration, the actual net new payroll under EPFO was 22.7 million, while the second job (or those who exited EPFO and re-joined and re-subscribed) was 21.7 million, during the four-year period ended FY23.

According to Mr. Soumya Kanti Ghosh, Group Chief Economic Adviser, “Already 4.4 million net new EPF subscribers have joined, of which the first payroll was 1.92 million. If this trend continues for the whole fiscal then in FY24, the net new payroll is expected to cross the 16 million mark, which will be the highest ever, with the first payroll expected to be in the range of 7-8 million.”

The report suggested using bank sakhis engaged under the National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) as banking correspondents to enable the increase of women in the labour force, citing the 27% share of women in the payroll data.

It was also recommended that a policy might be developed to require at least 30% of the employees to be female banking correspondents, particularly in areas where women have limited access to and use of these accounts.

Since April 2018, the government has been publishing statistics on employment in the formal sector that cover the period from September 2017 onwards. The information is based on the number of subscribers who have signed up for the Employees' State Insurance (ESI) Scheme, the Employees' Provident Fund (EPF) Scheme, and the National Pension System (NPS).

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.