Five states create over 50% jobs in formal sector, says EPFO data
More than half of the formal sector employment is created by five states in India, says a report by the Employee Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO).
The top states are Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Karnataka, and Haryana. These states contributed 74.71 lakh of the total 1.29 crore new registrations to the EPFO scheme. The EPFO began maintaining this database since September 2017.
But the figures provided by the EPFO and the Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) do not always reflect the exact employment status of the country.
This is because all companies do not comply with the EPFO regulation of registering all employees mandatorily. The strength of the companies are often misrepresented. Also, if an employee leaves a company and joins a new one after a break, it may not always indicate job creation.
Unemployment rate in India has been at an alarming low. The August 2019 figure shows a 45-year low of 7.5 percent. New enrolments to EPFO and Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (ESIC), two agencies handling pension funds of formal sector employees in India, paint a totally different picture.
Recently, the government claimed that around 14.33 lakh new jobs were created in the country in November 2019 alone, as per ESIC figures.
It recorded 1.49 crore gross new enrolments in the financial year 2018-19. It said 1.04 crore new employees got registered from April till November, 2019. Since September 2017, a total of 3.37 crore new enrolments were recorded.
New enrolments in the current financial year (2019) has constantly been above 11 lakh per month. July recorded the maximum registrations with over 14.62 lakh new jobs in a single month, ESIC data said.
The EPFO registered 3.03 crore new subscribers since September 2017. The 2018-19 financial year recorded 1.39 crore employment while in the current year (2019-20) it crossed 79 lakh.
The top five states created the maximum number of jobs since September 2017. The states accounted for more than half of the employment in the country in all the age brackets. Tamil Nadu provided maximum employment to individuals below 18 years of age. It provided 18,792 jobs in the current financial year while 51,925 since 2017 to this age group.
Maharashtra dominates all the other age brackets – 18 to 25, 26 to 35, and above 35 years. It provided 18.90 lakh jobs for the 18 to 25 age bracket since 2017. The state turned out to be the biggest employer in the formal sector. It created a total of 30.73 lakh jobs over a period of two-and-half years.
The top five industries that created the maximum number of employment in last year were – expert services (consultancies), textiles, trading, and engineering products & services. The sectors have been on the top five list for the past three years.
Gender disparity
Considering enrolment figures of the past three financial years, the number of female employees has increased. However, even today, they form only 23.04 per cent of the total workforce that joined the formal sector in the current fiscal year. In 2017-18 and 2018-19, it was 18.12 and 20.97 percent respectively of total newly enrolled employees. Transgenders form only 0.01 per cent of the new workforce.