: The Congress on Monday questioned Modi government’s employment figure that it created 8 crore new jobs between 2021 and 2024 and stated “no spin-doctoring” can take away from the fact that “2014-24 has seen jobless growth.”

The Congress said that this claim initially emerged from the Reserve Bank of India’s KLEMS data, which is Integrated Industry-Level Production Account that tracks the sources of growth in output and the GDP, which the party had earlier countered on July 15, this year.

“The government’s spin doctors have now mustered another statistic – that of 6.2 crore net subscribers joining the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) database between September 2017 and March 2024. Both claims are based on half-truths,” charged Jairam Ramesh, General Secretary, Communications of the All Indian Congress Committee (AICC).

According to the Congress MP, the Government adopted an expansive definition of employment, without registering the quality and circumstances of employment to justify its claim of 8 crore new jobs.

A large part of the claimed “employment growth”, pointed out Ramesh, is recording unpaid household work done by women as “employment.” It is not new employment opportunity creation and the ‘80 million new jobs’ headline also elides discussion on the quality of jobs, he stated.

Amidst the poor economic climate, the share of salaried, formal employment in the labour market has decreased, he stated on the contrary.

Workers are moving to low productivity informal and agricultural jobs, which KLEMS is capturing as jobs created, he claimed.

KLEMS Data

“This is why the KLEMS data shows an increase in employment during the Covid-19 pandemic years, when large sections of the economy fully shut down. While crucial sectors like education saw 12 lakh fewer jobs in 2020-2021, a whopping 1.8 crore “jobs” were “created” in agriculture. Thus, factory workers, teachers, miners, etc. who returned home during COVID-19 and had to return to farming and agricultural labour are registered as a “job created” in agriculture,” the Congress leader commented.

Jairam Ramesh stated that the government is citing the addition of 6.2 crore net subscribers in the EPFO database to show record employment growth, without revealing the full picture. The EPFO, as per him, only tracks the organised sector (less than 10% of total employment).

The Supreme Court verdict in 2020 required the EPFO to include contractual workers at any establishment which employs more than 20 people. A substantial number of workers who were already employed are now being reflected in EPFO data – these are not new jobs created, he argued.

Part of the net increase in EPFO has to do with ease of registration – the process is now online, free of cost, and hassle-free, without requiring a visit to the EPFO office, he stated.

“Whatever statistical jugglery they engage in, the truth remains: India’s unemployment rate today is the highest it has been in 45 years, with the unemployment rate for graduate youth at 42 per cent ” Ramesh alleged.

This crisis is of the government’s own making, caused by the decimation of job creating MSMEs through the ‘Tughlakian demonetisation’, a hastily rushed through GST, an unplanned COVID-19 lockdown, and rising imports from China, the Congress leader was of the view.

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