oppn parties The Mystery Behind 4 Million Jobs In 8 Months

News Snippets

  • SP drops two candidates owing allegiance to Azam Khan from Rampur and Moradabad
  • In Assam, a controversy erupted after a picture of UPPL leader Benjamin Basumatary, lying on a stack of Rs 500 notes circulated on social media. UPPL is an ally of the BJP
  • AAP's Jalandhar-West MP Sushil Kumar Rinku joins the BJP. He was the only AAP Lok Sabha MP
  • Supreme Court dismisses Centre's plea to review its 2023 verdict in the PMLA case
  • Close save for passengers as they remain unhurt after the wings of two planes graze at Kolkata airport. Pilots derostered and inquiry ordered by DGCA
  • Bengal BJP leader Dilip Ghosh gets notice from the EC as well as the BJP for making ugly remarks about Mamata Banerjee's parentage
  • Sadanand Vasanth Date, who faught terrorists in the 26/11 attack and was awarded the Preisent's Police medal, has been appointed the head of the NIA
  • Centre will borrow Rs 7.5L cr in the first six months of FY25, nearly 50% of the target for the full year
  • 25 stocks, including SBI, will see same day trade settlements from today in the world's fastest settlement mode in both BSE and NSE
  • Stocks recover smartly on Wednesday: Sensex rises 526 points to 72996 and Nifty 118 points to 22123
  • Tennis: Rohan Bopanna-Matthew Ebden reached the semifinals of the Miami Open
  • IPL: records tumble as SRH beat MI in a high-scoring match. SRH score 277/3 with 18 sixes and Mumbai score 246 with 20 sixes to fall short by 31 runs. Atotal of 38 sixes, highest in an IPL match were hit and both teams combined to score 523 runs, the highest aggregate in an IPL match
  • Amul will launch fresh milk in the US
  • IPL: RCB beat Punjab by 4 wickets as Kohli and Karthik shine with the bat
  • India strongly objected to German foreign office remarks over the arrest of delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, called it "biased assumptions"
Delhi Lt Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena says government cannot be run from jail, hints at President's Rule in the capital ////// In a dangerous incident, the wings of two planes grazed while taxiing on the runway at Kolkata airport, all passengers were safe but DGCA ordered an inquiry and the pilots were derostered
oppn parties
The Mystery Behind 4 Million Jobs In 8 Months

By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2018-06-27 13:44:26

About the Author

Sunil Garodia Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
People are not finding jobs. Several ruling party politicians have even advised the youth to sell pakoras instead, although selling tea would be a better option for then one can dream of being the prime minister one day. Jokes apart, even as the nation faces an army of unemployed, the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has reported, citing figures available with it, that more than 4 million jobs were created in the formal sector in the during September 2017 to April 2018. That translates to nearly 17000 jobs every day. So who is getting these jobs? What is the mystery behind a rush of enrolments in EPFO and the ground reality of jobless youth?

The BJP had taken to advertising this fact in a campaign (see the lead picture). But is this true? Are so many jobs being created or is it just that companies are shifting those they had employed informally to the formal sector to reduce profits? Is this post-GST data released by the EPFO believable as a standalone data or should it be compared with data in similar periods in the past? Clearly, more detailed study is needed to establish if new jobs were added or there was just a shift of those employed informally to the formal sector.

The Economic Times (ET) has unraveled the mystery in an excellent editorial. It so transpires that businesses in the formal sector were underreporting employee heads and outlays on salaries and wages. But ever since GST came into force, businesses find that artificial and common ways of reducing profits shown in the balance sheet have vanished. Hence they are bringing more and more workers on the rolls. This is a very plausible theory to explain the mystery.

Another big issue is that generation of the so-called black money has also diminished. Previously, businesses used to take purchase bills of sundry items from the market to reduce profits. The amount paid by cheque to the biller was returned in cash, after deducting the agreed “commission.” After GST, it is becoming increasingly difficult for big businesses to procure false bills. This has dried up their source of generating unaccounted cash.

As the ET has explained, this is a boon for workers as they will now be formally employed and enjoy all the benefits of the social security system in place, like minimum wages, fixed working hours, holidays, PF and ESI. It will also benefit trade unions and NGOs monitoring Indian exporters for fair labour practices. This is one more happy spin-off of GST that will benefit the economy.

read the ET editorial here