EPF

EPFO data: Need to see if new jobs are from existing employers or newly registered ones, says Pronab Sen

EPFO Data
While the recently released EPFO payroll data showed a net addition of 3.11 million workers during the September-February period, International Growth Centre’s India Director and former Chief Statistician of India Pronab Sen said the more appropriate way to measure jobs should be from the employer’s side to see whether the new addition of jobs is from existing employers or newly registered employers. In an interview to Aanchal Magazine and Anil Sasi, Sen said that the GST may have triggered companies to register and added to the EPFO enrollment numbers, which is not equivalent to “creating a new job” as against already registered employers who show an increase in enrollment that should be counted as a net addition to organised sector jobs. Edited excerpts:
The EPFO’s recent move to release payroll data concludes that over 3 million jobs were created between September-February. Is it a good data set to measure job creation?
The thing is that 3.1 million is about half of the entrance into the labour force. So if the data is saying that out of the new entrants into the labour force, half have found jobs in the formal sector, which is what the EPFO represents, in a situation where the data itself has suggested that only 15 percent are in the formal sector, that’s a big switch and that kind of strains credibility. If that had said a million or 1.5 million jobs, then it’s fine… but 3.5 million is a bit too much.
Source: Indian Express
 

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