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Updated: Jan 25, 2019 17:12 IST

More than 18 million jobs were generated by the country’s formal sector in a 15-month period starting September 2017 and ending November 2018, suggests a study based on payroll data of retirement fund body EPFO, PFRDA and Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (ESIC).

As many as 1,84,38,748 new members joined the ESI scheme run by ESIC during the 15 months until November 2018, showed the Central Statistics Office (CSO) study based on payroll data of different social security schemes.

The CSO study released on Friday showed that as many as 1,79,34,300 new members joined the social security schemes run by the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) during September 2017 to November 2018.

However, the study stated that 1,39,31,607 members exited the EPFO schemes during the 15-month period and 33,48,093 members rejoined the subscription again during the period. Thus the net addition was 73,50,786 during the period under review.

The study showed that as many as 10,31,484 new members joined the ESI scheme in November 2018, which was 12.88 per cent lower than 11,84,042 new subscribers in the same month in 2017.

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The highest number of 14,68,880 subscribers joined the ESI scheme in July 2018 during the 15-month period.

However, the study showed that employment generation in the formal sector increased by 48 per cent to touch a 15-month high of 7.32 lakh in November 2018 as compared to 4.93 lakh in the year-ago month, as per EPFO payroll data released earlier this month.

It also stated that the estimated total number of new New Pension Scheme (NPS) subscribers during the 15 months is 9,19,791. The NPS is run by the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA). It covers central and state government employees as well as voluntary subscriptions.

The CSO study said the present report gives different perspectives on the levels of employment in the formal sector and does not measure employment at a holistic level.

Since April 2018, this Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) has been bringing out the employment related statistics in the formal sector covering the period September 2017 onwards, using information on the number of subscribers who have subscribed under three major schemes, namely, the EPF, ESI and NPS schemes.

The CSO, which is a wing of the ministry, stated in the report that since the numbers of subscribers are from various sources, there are elements of overlap and the estimates are not additive.