New enrollments to the formal job market decline in August; women lose out

New enrollments to the government’s three social security schemes declined in August, hinting at a slower growth in formal jobs for the month and a worsening performance for women, provisional data released Wednesday showed.

The decline was much more pronounced for better-paying jobs, as new enrollments for the Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) Scheme declined 13.3% to 925,984 in August, its lowest level since the start of the fiscal, compared with 1.07 million in July.

However, net subscriptions to the EPF scheme, which also counts people who have exited the workforce and those who have rejoined, were at the highest level at 1.7 million since the start of the year.


Trends indicate that net subscription data is usually revised downwards as the extent of exits from the EPF scheme gets an upward revision. In August, 414,562 people ceased to be EPF members, more than half the average of 1 million between April and July 2023.

New subscribers to Employees' State Insurance Corporation declined at a slower rate of 4.3% to 1.44 million in August.

ESI, which usually caters to lower-paying jobs, applies to establishments with more than ten workers, whereas EPF is applicable to establishments with over 20 workers.

Data released for another pension scheme, the National Pension Scheme, also indicated a decline in new enrollments to 71,228 in August from the peak of 76,372 achieved last month. While central government and state government enrollments increased, new subscriptions from the corporate sector more than halved to 13,829 in August.

NPS may receive further setbacks if more states switch to the old pension scheme.

Women lose out

The decline was much more pronounced for women for both EPF and ESIC new enrollments.

An ET analysis found that the share of women in new enrollments declined to 26.3% in August from a peak of 27.6% in June, whereas in the case of EPF, the share came down to 20.9% from 21.1% recorded earlier this year.

A recent ET analysis showed that the gender pay gap widened further in 2022-23 (July-June), as wage growth slowed much more for women compared with their male counterparts.