EPFO records 133,000 new enrolments in April

Net employment generation was recorded at 133,000 during April in the formal sector — impacted by Covid-19-induced lockdown, according to the latest Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) payroll data.

The government had imposed a nationwide lockdown from March 25 to fight Covid-19 in the country.

The provisional payroll data released by the EPFO last month had earlier showed that the net new enrollments dipped to 572,000 in March this year compared to 1,021,000 in February.

The net new enrollments with the EPFO hovers around 700,000 every month on an average.

However, during 2019-20, the number of net new subscribers rose to 7,858,000 compared to 6,112,000 recorded by EPFO during 2018-19, showed the latest payroll data released on Saturday.

EPFO has been releasing the payroll data of new subscribers since April 2018, covering a period starting from September 2017.

The data also showed that during September 2017-April 2020 period, the number of net new subscribers was around 1.56 crore.

The net new enrolments with EPFO was 1,552,000 during September 2017-March 2018.

EPFO said the payroll data is provisional as updation of employees' records is a continuous process and gets updated in subsequent months. “The government announced lockdown on March 24. Accordingly ECR (PF returns) filing date for March month was extended to May 15,” EPFO had said last month while releasing the data.

“The due date for submission of ECRS for April has been extended in view of the lockdown,” it said on Saturday. The estimates are net of the new members enrolled, members exited and rejoined during the month, as per records of EPFO.