Month-on-month comparison of the addition of formal workforce, however, shows an increase of 15.6% with December net employee addition at 1.28 million compared to 1.48 million in January.
According to the provisional payroll data released by the labour ministry on Monday, out of 1.48 million subscribers added to EPFO during the month, around 0.77 million new members have come under the ambit of EPFO for the first time.
Further, only 0.34 million members exited from the retirement fund body coverage in January, which is the lowest exit in the last four months while approximately 1.06 million members re-joined EPFO membership.
“These members switched their jobs and re-joined the establishments covered under EPFO and opted to transfer their accumulations instead of applying for final settlement thus extending their social security protection,” it said.
Among the newly joined members, highest enrolment is registered in the age-group of 18-21 years with 0.22 million members, followed by the addition of 0.20 million members in the 22-25 years age bracket.
“The age-groups of 18-25 years constitute 55.52% of total new members during the month. This indicates that the majority of the members are first-time job seekers joining the organised sector workforce of the country,” it added.Gender-wise analysis of payroll data reflects that enrolment of net female members has been 0.28 million in January, 2023, of which around 0.19 million female members are the new joinees.
“This shows that 68.61% of the net female members have come under the fold of EPFO for the first time,” the ministry said.
State-wise comparison shows high month-on-month addition in Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, Delhi and Himachal Pradesh. As per the data, the top five states in terms of net member addition are Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Delhi, together constituting 58.85% of net member addition during the month.
“Of all the states, Maharashtra has added 22.73% of overall member addition followed by Karnataka with 10.58% during the month.
The classification of industry-wise payroll data indicates that ‘Expert Services’ (consisting of manpower suppliers, normal contractors, security services, miscellaneous activities etc.) constitute 40.64% of total member addition during the month.
Further, month-on-month payroll data shows higher enrolments across industries such as automobile servicing, banks other than nationalized banks, restaurant and tea plantation.
“The payroll data is provisional since the data generation is a continuous exercise, as updating employee record is a continuous process,” it added.
EPFO has been releasing the payroll data since April 2018 covering the period September, 2017 onwards.
EPFO is a social security organization responsible for providing social security benefits in the form of provident, pension and insurance funds to the organized workforce of the country covered under the provisions of Employees’ Provident Funds & Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952.