Provident Fund Body Added Nearly 14 Lakh Net Members In November 2023

Employees' Provident Fund Organisation's (EPFO) provisional payroll data highlighted that the organisation has added 13.95 lakh net members in November 2023, an official statement said.

According to the Ministry of Labour and Employment, the cumulative net addition of members during the current financial year continues to remain higher than that of the corresponding period of the previous year.

The data indicates that around 7.36 lakh new members have enrolled during November 2023. Among the newly joined members, the age group of 18-25 years constitutes 57.30 per cent of total new members added during the month, showing that the majority of the members joining the organised sector workforce of the country are youth, who are mostly first-time job seekers, the statement added.

The payroll data reflected that approximately 10.67 lakh members exited but rejoined EPFO. These members switched their jobs and re-joined the establishments covered under the ambit of EPFO and opted to transfer their accumulations instead of applying for final settlement thus, extending their social security protection.

As per the statement, gender-wise analysis of payroll data represented that out of the total 7.36 lakh new members added during the month, around 1.94 lakh are new female members, joining EPFO for the first time.

Also, the net female member addition during the month stood at around 2.80 lakh. The percentage of net female members out of net subscriber addition stood at 20.05 per cent, which is the highest since September 2023, showing a growing participation of female employees in the organized sector workforce, it added.

State-wise analysis of payroll data denotes that net member addition is highest in the 5 states/ UTs of Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Haryana and Delhi. These states constitute around 58.81 per cent of net member addition, adding a total of 8.20 lakh members during the month. Of all the states, Maharashtra is leading by adding 21.60 per cent of net members during the month.

Month-on-month comparison of industry-wise data displays significant growth in the members working in establishments engaged in agriculture farms, coffee plantations, sugar, rubber plantations, tiles etc. Of the total net membership, around 41.94 per cent addition is from expert services (consisting of manpower suppliers, normal contractors, security services, miscellaneous activities etc).

The statement said that the above payroll data is provisional since the data generation is a continuous exercise, as updating employee records is a continuous process. The previous data hence gets updated every month. From April 2018, EPFO has been releasing payroll data covering the period from September 2017 onwards.

In monthly payroll data, the count of members joining EPFO for the first time through a validated Universal Account Number (UAN), existing members exiting from coverage of EPFO and those who exited but re-joining as members, is taken to arrive at net monthly payroll, it added.

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