EPFO adds 1.29 million net subscribers in October, says labour ministry

A year-on-year comparison of payroll data reflects an increase of 21,026 in net membership in October 2022, the ministry said

Retirement fund body EPFO added 12.94 lakh subscribers on a net basis in October 2022, the labour ministry said on Tuesday.

The ministry in a statement said that around 2,282 new establishments have started complying for the first time under the Employees' Provident Funds & Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952 ensuring social security cover to their employees.

A year-on-year comparison of payroll data reflects an increase of 21,026 in net membership in October 2022, it stated.

Of the total 12.94 lakh members added during the month, around 7.28 lakh new members have been covered under the social security cover of the EPFO for the first time, the provisional payroll data of Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) showed.

Among the new members, the highest number was registered for the age group of 18-21 years with 2.19 lakh members. This was followed by the age group of 22-25 years with 1.97 lakh members. Out of the total new members who joined, approximately 57.25 per cent are from the age group of 18-25 years of age.

During the month, approximately 5.66 lakh net members exited but rejoined the EPFO by changing their jobs within the establishments covered by EPFO and opted to transfer their funds from the previous PF account to the current account instead of opting for final settlement.

Gender-wise analysis of payroll data indicates that the enrolment of net female members has been 2.63 lakh in October 2022. Out of this, 1.91 lakh females have joined EPFO for the first time which is around 72.73 per cent of net female member addition during the month, it stated.

State-wise payroll figures highlight that a month-on-month growing trend in net member addition was observed in states of Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand etc.

In terms of net payroll addition during the month, the top five states constituted around 60.15 per cent of the total net payroll addition among all age groups. The states of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Delhi & Haryana have added approximately 7.78 lakh net members during the month.

The classification of industry-wise payroll data indicates that mainly two categories i.e. Expert services' (consisting of manpower agencies, private security agencies and small contractors etc.) and Trading-Commercial establishments' constitute 48 per cent of total member addition during the month.

Comparing industry-wise data with that of the previous month, higher enrolments have been noticed in industries namely, Newspaper Establishments', Sugar', Rice milling', etc.

The 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 the month of April 2018, EPFO has been releasing payroll data covering the period from October 2017 onwards.

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

The EPFO is committed to extending social security benefits in the form of Provident, Pension and Insurance Funds to the organized workforce of the country covered under the purview of the Employees' Provident Funds & Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952.