EPFO payroll additions: October records y-o-y rise but sequential monthly drop

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October, the month of festivities in large parts of the country, also brought in some happy tidings for employment generation with formal job creation rising 18.2% compared to the same month in 2022, data from the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation showed. As many as 15.30 lakh of net new subscribers were added to the payroll data of the country’s oldest social security scheme. The data that was released on December 20, however, showed that that was a drop of 11% in job generation when compared to the figure achieved in the preceding month of September this year. In September this year, 17.20 lakh net jobs were created, according to the EPFO payrolls. There was no steady pattern in the employment generation figures this year as displayed by the EPFO data. It recorded 12.4 lakh subscribers in April, 11.2 lakh in May, 13.5 lakh in June, 15.7 million in July and 14.9 million in August. In October, EPFO added 7.7 lakh new subscribers. It denoted an increase of 6.07% from the figure recorded a year earlier. The biggest share of the new additions – as high as 58.6% — took place in the age group of 18-25 years. “This shows that the majority of the members joining the organised sector workforce are mostly first-time job seekers in this age-group,” said the labour and employment ministry in a statement issued on December 20. The EPFO payroll data also showed that 11.1 lakh members went out of the EPFO but came back to the rolls after they got a new job. “They opted to transfer their accumulations instead of applying for final settlement, thus extending their social security protection with EPFO,” said the ministry in the statement. The ministry also claimed that it noticed a decline in the number of exits over the last four months, which is a sure indication that fewer and fewer employees lost their jobs during this time-period. October also recorded the lowest number of such exits in the year to date, said the ministry though it did not reveal further data.