In the latest govt. release of EPF and ESI numbers, the chaos in industry is revealed – not job situation.
What was started last year as a trial balloon has now become a joke, after getting sanctified by everybody in the govt., from PM Modi downwards. Yesterday, the govt. released new numbers on how many people enrolled in three of its social security schemes, provident fund (EPF), employees health insurance (ESI) and pension (NPS). These numbers show that EPF added over 1 crore new members, ESI added 1.19 crore and NPS some 6.1 lakh.
After last year’s concerted attempt to add up all of these and claim the grand total as new jobs created was roundly criticised and shown to be false, this latest data release says that these are “different perspectives on the levels of employment in the formal sector and does not measure employment at a holistic level”.
The reasons why this caveat became necessary included – the enrolment in schemes is not additive because the same person may be enrolling in all three; just new enrolment doesn’t equate with new jobs because others would be leaving jobs and so net creation of jobs is the more pertinent number; and, the schemes have their own boundaries (like income limit, number of employees for becoming eligible etc.) and can’t possibly reflect all jobs in the formal sector, forget about all jobs generally.
So, the govt. is now putting out new enrolment as well as numbers of those who are quitting the schemes. For instance, while 107.5 lakh new members were enrolled in EPF, 60.4 existing members quit the scheme. So net addition works out to 47.1 lakh.
What was started last year as a trial balloon has now become a joke, after getting sanctified by everybody in the govt., from PM Modi downwards. Yesterday, the govt. released new numbers on how many people enrolled in three of its social security schemes, provident fund (EPF), employees health insurance (ESI) and pension (NPS). These numbers show that EPF added over 1 crore new members, ESI added 1.19 crore and NPS some 6.1 lakh.
After last year’s concerted attempt to add up all of these and claim the grand total as new jobs created was roundly criticised and shown to be false, this latest data release says that these are “different perspectives on the levels of employment in the formal sector and does not measure employment at a holistic level”.
The reasons why this caveat became necessary included – the enrolment in schemes is not additive because the same person may be enrolling in all three; just new enrolment doesn’t equate with new jobs because others would be leaving jobs and so net creation of jobs is the more pertinent number; and, the schemes have their own boundaries (like income limit, number of employees for becoming eligible etc.) and can’t possibly reflect all jobs in the formal sector, forget about all jobs generally.
So, the govt. is now putting out new enrolment as well asnumbers of those who are quitting the schemes. For instance, while 107.5 lakh new members were enrolled in EPF, 60.4 existing members quit the scheme. So net addition works out to 47.1 lakh.
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