Employment Outlook of India: Reality or Hoax?

Central Statistics Office (CSO) has released its second payroll data for employment outlook. It is used as a gauge to review job creations and status of employment in the economy.

According to the report, it uses statistical estimates from the data acquired from government schemes. This step was taken into effect since April 2018 where It aimed at releasing data from September 2017 onwards.

The government of India has accepted the recommendation of releasing monthly payroll data. The data was formed using the number of employees who availed the benefit of major schemes, namely, EPFO (Employee’s Provident Fund), ESIC (Employee’s State Insurance Scheme), and NPS (National Pension Scheme).

The decision of releasing data is with an objective to put an end towards all speculations related to employment in the country.

The data released shows an increase of 31.10 lakh people of all age group between the period September 2018 to February 2018.

PROVISIONAL ESTIMATES OF SUBSCRIBERS AS PER EPFO RECORDS

Month	Number of new EPF subscribers	Net Ceased Subscribers
June	13,34,501	4,62,619
July	13,04,919	3,28,244
August	10,41,020	1,46,251

Source: EPFO

Whereas, there was an addition of 6.90 lakh people during September 2017 to August 2018 in NPS. However, the data related to NPS additions include only from Tier- accounts.

PROVISIONAL ESTIMATES OF SUBSCRIBERS AS PER NPS RECORDS

Month	Number of newly registered employees
June	42,197
July	38,206
August	40,606

Source: NPS

The data is divided into Central Government, State Government and Non-Government employees for a better view. Amongst all three sectors, the State Government showed a maximum increase in the number of employees in the NPS scheme throughout. However, the growth rate cannot be measured accurately in NPS as it included only Tier- 1 accounts.

The number of newly registered employees and paying contribution towards the ESIC scheme also showed additions near to 12 lakhs in each month from September 2017 to August 2018. Whereas, there was a high number of cancellations in the EPFO scheme. More than 50% of new EPF registered candidates ceased subscribing. The number of cancellations reduced to 35% in August 2018.

PROVISIONAL ESTIMATES OF SUBSCRIBERS AS PER ESIC RECORDS

Month	Number of existing employees	Number of newly registered employees
June	2,82,32,534	13,58,768
July	2,84,18,734	14,42,332
August	2,76,16,883	13,31,166

Source: ESIC

The research by Saumya Kanti Ghosh, chief economic advisor of SBI and Polak Ghosh, a professor at IIM-B forecasted 70 lakh jobs in 2017-18. This was crossed by Jairam Ramesh, former Union Minister in Hindu Newspaper stating, “new additions in EPFO does not automatically mean net new jobs in the economy.”

The move came after the government aimed at improving employment data under the scheme Niti Aayog. However, the data pertains to various sources that have the possibility to triggers overlap and the estimates are not additive.

ESIC now manages a corpus of 50 lakh people which is a huge number. But living in a highly populated economy, we still have a long way to go. This is the beginning of something more constructive that should be looked forward with hope.