Jobs

Job creation is a widely debated topic in India. The EPFO (Employees' Provident Fund Organisation) payroll numbers are used as a proxy to measure the employment creation in India. EPFO covers all organisations in India in which 20 or more persons are employed. Since April 2018, EPFO has been releasing payroll data covering the period September 2017 onward.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in its 2014 election manifesto gave highest priority to job creation and aimed to create 25 crore jobs till the year 2024 as part of an economic development programme. The government has been facing flak from the opposition for not meeting the announced job creation target.

As per EPFO numbers, monthly job creation in India has shrunk from 5.65 lakh as per the December release to 4.49 lakh per month as declared in the March 2019 release. Going by the pre-poll promise of one crore jobs per year by PM Modi, around 8.4 lakh jobs should have been created every month.

Job creation has remained a tough nut to crack for the Modi government ever since it came to power in 2014. Promises of creating employment for the hopeful youth of the country was one of the key promises that helped the BJP win the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

The consumer confidence survey conducted by the Reserve Bank of India notes that "although consumers remain worried about the current employment situation, the majority expects improvement in the future".

The December 2018 round of the consumer confidence survey showed that 37.6 per cent of the respondents expected that the employment levels would improve in future which was higher than the November's expectations of 23.1 per cent. As per CMIE (centre for monitoring Indian economy), the unemployment rate stood at 6.56 per cent in the December 2018 quarter whereas the employment rate stood at 39.66 per cent. Another CMIE report shows that India lost around 11 million jobs between December 2017 and December 2018.

In the past, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has referred to government data showing increase in beneficiaries registered with the Employee Provident Fund Organisation and National Pension Scheme, to establish that jobs have been created in his regime. However, critics say the EPFO data cannot be considered a proof of job creation.

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