This move by EPFO will show the exact records of formal employment and will reassure the governments' saying "to calculate jobs on the basis of the provident fund records"
New Delhi: The government of India is planning to keep a track on people who change Jobs to get more detailed information on formal employment in the country and also the net employment generated.
Employee’s Provident Fund Organisation which records and releases the monthly data on employees and jobs is planning to capture data under new addition, about the “job change”. The records will tell about those who exit and rejoin the system after changing their jobs or after a gap in employment. But such data will not be reliable as there is a delay in reporting on existing and those who rejoin.
An official from EPFO told a media house on the condition of “anonymity” that “The mechanism to count those returning and rejoining is not very strong at present...once in place, it should give more robust figures and soon, net employment numbers will also be provided.”
From April 2018, the monthly data on the payroll is being released which is covering the data from September 2017, but it has ambiguities because of which the data about jew jobs created in the economy is not clear. Because EPFO maintains data about the organised sector, not the unorganised sector. The unorganised sector includes all the firms having employees less than 20 and they do not come under the net of PF. Hence a large number of micro, small and medium enterprises are left out from EPFO records. Moreover, EPFO is not mandatory for those with a salary of more than Rs 15,000 a month. The latest data shows that the number of EPFO subscribers shot up to a 17-month high of more than 896,000 in January.
The government has also claimed that Mudra loans can be used to estimate employment, the official cited earlier said, “EPFO and Mudra are establishment approach. They review people who are present, not those who are not there.” he also said that “The survey and establishment approach need to be reconciled to provide a more robust data also the surveys give one picture of employment and these management information systems give another picture, both should ideally converge at some point of time.”
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