A little over 0.92 million new subscribers joined the social security schemes run by the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), the latest payroll data showed.
While new enrolment may not necessarily mean new jobs, the addition of new subscribers in April this fiscal was higher than the monthly average recorded in last three fiscal years. This was, however, lower than the monthly average of new addition for 2018-19.
At 1.7 million, net enrolment in April, however, was higher than the monthly average recorded in the previous four years. EPFO has been releasing payroll data since September, 2017.
EPFO arrives at the net number deducting the total of the subscribers’ who have exited from the sum of new subscribers and those who left earlier but re-joined during the month.
The latest payroll data showed that while 0.4 million subscribers exited the scheme during the month, nearly 1.2 million those exited earlier came back to the EPFO fold in April FY23.
“Age-wise comparison of payroll data indicates that the age-group of 22-25 years has registered the highest number of net enrolments with 0.43 million lakh additions during April, 2022. This is followed by the age-group of 29-35 years with a healthy addition of 0.37 million net additions during the month. In nutshell, these two age-groups constitute around 47.07% net subscribers’ additions during the month,” an official statement said.
Nearly 68% of the net additions of subscribers were from six states including Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Gujarat and Delhi. Share of female employees were only 21.38%.
“The payroll data is provisional since the data generation is a continuous exercise, as updation of employee record is a continuous process. The previous data, hence, gets updated every month,” the ministry of labour and employment said.