About 1.74 lakh new jobs were created in Tamil Nadu’s formal sector in August 2021, according to provisional data provided by the Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO). This is an an increase of 6.1% from about 1.64 lakh jobs in July 2021, as per the data.
The new jobs added are measured in terms of the number of new net enrolments made with EPFO.
In April 2021, the number of new jobs created was about 1 lakh and it dropped to 33,421 in May 2021 amid the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The situation improved in June 2021, with 65,968 jobs added in the formal sector.
“Tamil Nadu remains among the top 3 states in India adding new subscribers in the EPFO. We are seeing a re-start of economic activities in the “services industry” and an enrolment of new employees in the sector,” Aditya Mishra, chief executive of recruitment firm, CIEL HR Service,s said.The manufacturing, engineering and construction sectors have seen a lot of churn in manpower. “We are seeing new people join organisations in these sectors too,” he added.
Mr. Mishra also pointed out that with the positive momentum of digitisation, the IT industry has expanded rapidly. The IT services and business process management industries have been adding people quickly, and so are companies in the FinTech, EdTech, Healthtech spaces, he added.
Tamil Nadu, as expected, has performed much better than the other southern states as per the payroll data from EPFO, said K.E. Raghunathan, former national president of the All India Manufacturers Organisation and Central Board of Trustees (CBT) member of EPFO, representing employers. He attributed it to the good COVID-19 vaccination drive and improved industrial activity in services, export and manufacturing sectors.
The festival season pick up in demand, backlog order execution, the employees shift from the informal to formal sector are the other possible reasons for improved job numbers, Mr. Raghunathan, said.
Political stability and a visible thrust on industrial growth has attracted employers to expand their workforce to get prepared, he added.
According to the Union government, payroll data is provisional since the data generation is a continuous exercise, as updation of employee records is a continuous process and previous data hence gets updated every month.
