Narendra Modi govt generated 35.3 lakh jobs between September 2017 and February this year, says NITI Aayog

Niti Aayog today said that total 35.3 lakh new jobs were generated between September 2017 and February 2018. This will bolster PM Narendra Modi’s case as he fights off charges by the Opposition that growth has not created enough jobs in India – that under his government service there has not been jobless growth. As per data released by retirement fund body Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) and Pension Fund Regulatory Development Authority (PFRDA),” a total 35.3 lakh new payrolls were generated during this six-month period. The EPFO data shows that from September 2017 to February 2018, 31.10 lakh new payroll additions were made across all age groups in India.

India’s organised sector created a little over 1,100 jobs per day in 2016-17 which calculated up to 4.16 lakh new jobs for the entire year. The rate of job creation was 2 percent higher than 2015-16. In the Last quarter of 2016-17, the hardest hit by the demonetisation saw much higher job creation than the previous three quarters of 2016, claims the quarterly report on employment scenario, released by the labour ministry on Friday. Nearly 45 percent of the total jobs created during the year were generated between January and March 2017.

The NPS presently manages the corpus of around 50 lakh employees in state and central government. For this, the central and state autonomous bodies have been shown under central and state governments respectively, while non-government refers to the corporate sector employees. The Niti Aayog said that the payroll data from these three organisations would now be released every month. Given that till now there was no such system in place, this data would provide an extra firm basis for various analysis and studies of the economy and job creation.

A new era dawns. #India introduces Monthly Payroll Reporting for formal sector for the first time. Monthly Payroll Data from Sep 2017 to Feb 2018 published on websites of @PFRDAOfficial , @socialepfo & @esichq #NayiNITINayiDishaNayaBharat Read more: https://t.co/AbKH9Imizx

— NITI Aayog (@NITIAayog) April 26, 2018

According to NITI Aayog, EPFO, PFRDA and the Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) would release payroll data every month. But, since ESIC data is not Aadhaar seeded, there may be the further scope of some modifications, it said. The Modi government took charge in mid of 2014, and for that full year, 4.93 lakh new jobs were added across these eight sectors. So job addition in the first full year of Modi government fell to just a fourth of 2014 and was only a one/tenth of the growth seen in 2009 when the UPA was in Central.

During the second round of the UPA government from 2010 to 2014,  more jobs were generated in the starting nine months each year, across the eight sectors. In the first nine months of 2010, 6.58 lakh jobs were added, and in 2011 this number was reached at 7.04 lakhs, in the 2012 year it was 3.22 lakhs, and nine months of 2013 it stood at 3.36 lakh.

In 2014, the nine-month period saw 3.76 lakh jobs being created but a quarter wise degradation shows the largest number of jobs were created between April to June at 1.82 lakh, and then job creation kept declining to 1.58 in the July-September quarter before falling to 1.17 lakh in the last quarter of the calendar year.