A good beginning: Payroll data can benefit from more transparency

It is high time the government moved away from a survey-based approach of assessing employment growth in the country, and opted for payroll data

The Union government last week released the first-ever estimate of payroll based on the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) subscription database. The data showed that 3.11 million new jobs were added in the formal economy between September 2017 and February 2018. The EPFO manages social security funds of workers in the organised and the semi-organised sectors and has, at present, 60 million members with active contribution. The payroll count is essentially the difference between the number of workers who joined and exited from the EPFO's fold, and as such is seen as the net addition to jobs. The Ministry of