The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation has added around 1.39 crore net members with an increase of 13.22 per cent in 2022-23, compared to the previous financial year’s 1.22 crore net members addition.

It added 13.40 lakh net members in the month of March, the last month of 2022-23. Out of those members, around 7.58 lakh new members have come under the ambit of EPFO for the first time. Among the newly joined members, the highest enrolment is registered in the age group of 18-21 years with 2.35 lakh members, followed by the age group of 22-25 years with 1.94 lakh members. The age groups of 18-25 years constituted 56.60 per cent of the total new members added during the month.

“This age-wise comparison of payroll data indicates that the majority of the members joining the organised sector workforce of the country are first-time job seekers,” the Ministry of Labour and Employment said.

The data also highlighted that approximately 10.09 lakh members re-joined EPFO membership. These members switched their jobs and re-joined the establishments covered under EPFO and opted to transfer their accumulations instead of applying for final settlement thus, extending their social security protection.

Gender-wise analysis of payroll data reflects that enrolment of net female members has been 2.57 lakh in March 2023, which is around 19.21 per cent of the net member addition for the month. Of these, 1.91 lakh female members are the new joinees. This is around 25.16 per cent addition of all the new joinees.

State-wise payroll figures highlight that the month-on-month growing trend in net member addition is reflected in the states of Haryana, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Mizoram.

In terms of net member addition, the top five states are Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Haryana and Gujarat. These states together constitute 58.68 per cent of net member addition during the month. Of all the states, Maharashtra is leading by adding 20.63 per cent of net members followed by the state of Tamil Nadu with 10.83 per cent during the month.

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 September 2017 onwards. EPFO is the country’s principal organization responsible for providing social security benefits to the organized/semi-organized sector workforce.