Budget 2019: EPFO membership increased by 2 crore in last two years, says Piyush Goyal

Finance Minister Piyush Goyal today said that the EPFO membership has been increased by 2 crore in the last 2 years. The minister further added that high growth, formalisation of the economy had led to the growth in the EPFO. Earlier, there were reports that had suggested employment generation in the formal sector increased by 48 per cent to touch a 15-month high of 7.32 lakh in November 2018 as compared to 4.93 lakh in the year-ago month, according to the latest EPFO payroll data.

Around 73.50 lakh new subscribers were added to the social security schemes of the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) from September 2017 to November 2018, the data showed. This indicates that these many jobs were created in the last 15 months.

The EPFO, however, revised downwards its payroll data for October 2018 to 6.66 lakh against the earlier estimate of 8.27 lakh. It also revised the cumulative job addition data from September 2017 to October 2018 downwards 16.4 per cent to 66.18 lakh from an earlier forecast of 79.16 lakh.

The lowest number of 55,831 subscribers were added to the EPFO schemes in March last, the data showed. During November 2018, the maximum number of 2.18 lakh jobs were created in the 18-21 years' age group followed by 2.03 lakh in the 22-25 years' age bracket. The EPFO said the data is provisional as updating of employee records is a continuous process and gets updated in subsequent month/s.

This is age-band wise data of new members registered under the EPFO where the first non-zero contribution received during particular month. For each age-wise band, the estimates are net of the members newly enrolled, exited and rejoined during the month as per records of the EPFO, it added.

The estimates may include temporary employees whose contributions may not be continuous for the entire year. Members' data are linked to unique Aadhaar Identity, it added. The EPFO manages social security funds of workers in the organised/semi organised sector in India and has more than 6 crore active members (with at least one-month contribution during the year.