12.5 million new jobs created since 2014: Labour minister Bhupender Yadav

Union labour and employment minister Bhupender Yadav said on Thursday that about 12.5 million new jobs have been created since 2014 as the country has seen massive increase in employment opportunities in the past nine years.

The minister referred to a number of institution-based labour surveys done by the ministry and cited data from 2014 to 2022.

“Under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi we focused on three subjects, namely sewa, sushasan, kalyan (service, good governance, welfare),” Yadav said, addressing a press conference on the performance of the labour ministry in the past nine years “When we talk about sewa (service) and sabka saath, sabka vikas (support of all, welfare for all), then you may recall that we took care of both organised and unorganised workers in the country.” Organised workers comprise just 10% of total workforce and 90% fall in the informal sector, he said.


“If you see the EPFO (Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation) data, the number of pensioners (under the Employees' Pension Scheme 1995) has increased from 5.1 million in 2014-15 to 7.2 million in 2021-22,” said Yadav.

The EPFO data showed that the total number of registered subscribers increased to 277.3 million in 2021-22 from 158.4 million in 2014-15, he said.

with the EPFO in 2022-23 was 13.8 million, higher than 12.2 million in 2021-22 and 7.70 million in 2020-21. About 7.85 million members were added in 2019-20 (pre-Covid-19) and 6.11 million in 2018-19, according to the data.

Talking about JAM (Jandhan, Aadhaar, Mobile), the minister said today “we are able to enroll about 300 million workers under the e-Sharam portal (a national database for informal workers) engaged in 400 different occupations as compared to 120 categories earlier”.

“Classification of occupation helps in making the right policies for increasing employment generation in a particular sector,” Yadav said, adding that his ministry is identifying different occupations for ragpickers, as in the case of coffee, rubber, tea and lichi plantations workers in the country