Making sense of EPFO data

Payroll statistics are India's only officially released employment source but they suffer from several gaps

Historically, India’s employment estimates have been generated using household and establishment surveys. Following the clamour for real time high frequency employment data, the task force set up to review India’s employment data last year recommended an additional data source, namely, administrative datasets. Since April 2018, the government has started reporting the progress made in payroll employment using membership data from three schemes — Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), Employees’ State Insurance Scheme (ESIC) and National Pension Scheme (NPS) on a monthly basis. The EPFO payroll numbers are most widely cited as they address problems of duplicate and inoperative accounts by