Formal job creation rebounded in June when the second wave of the pandemic had started waning. Payroll data by the Employees Provident Fund Organisation shows 1.28 million net new subscribers were added to the retirement fund body in June, 0.50 million more than in May when 0.77 million net new subscribers were added to EPFO.
“The impact of the second wave of COVID-19 pandemic waned during June 2021, leading to tremendous growth in net payroll additions as compared to April and May 2021,” EPFO said on Friday.
The provisional payroll data of EPFO, released on Friday, shows of the total 1.28 million net subscribers added during the month, around 0.81 million new members have come under the social security coverage of Employees’ Provident Funds Scheme for the first time.
During the month, around 0.47 million net subscribers exited but rejoined EPFO by changing jobs within the establishments covered by EPFO. “This shows that the majority of subscribers opted to continue their membership with EPFO, using transferring of funds from their previous job to the current PF account rather than applying for final withdrawal of their PF accumulations,” it said.
As per the data, the highest number of net enrolments of 0.61 million was in the age-group of 18-25 years, which is 47.89% of total net additions during the month of June, 2021. This is followed by net new enrollments of 0.25 million in the 29-35 years age group. “Many first time job seekers are joining the organised sector workforce in large numbers.,” it added.
The net female addition during the month stood at 0.25 million, which is around 0.07 million more than those added during May 2021.
Highest number of net new additions were in Maharashtra, Haryana, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka with approximately 0.77 million subscribers added during the month. This is around 60.61% of total net payroll addition across all age groups.
Expert services category, consisting of manpower agencies, private security agencies and small contractors, constitutes 41.84% of total subscribers added during the month followed by trading-commercial establishments, engineering products, building & construction, textiles, garment, hospitals and financing establishments.
“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,” EPFO added.
EPFO has been releasing payroll data covering the period September 2017 onwards from May 2018. EPFO provides provident fund, pension benefits to the members on their retirement and family pension and insurance benefits to their families in case of untimely death of the member.
EPFO is the country’s principal organization responsible for providing social security benefits to the organized/semi-organized sector workforce covered under the statute of EPF & MP Act, 1952.