After getting in 2021 from pandemic lows in the preceding year, the number of customers under the new pension plan (NPS) of both the main and state federal governments, including public sector business, declined 8.8 percent to 565,500 in 2022. Given that the Centre and states have actually mandated NPS for all government jobs, analysts believe NPS could be considered a proxy for new work generation by the public sector.

Nevertheless, a few Opposition-ruled states, including Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Punjab, have just recently revealed a go back to the old pension plan (OPS), thereby abandoning NPS. Of a total of 118,020 brand-new customers that joined NPS in 2022 under the main government, the share of young subscribers (18-28 years) declined to 65.2 per cent, from 67.8 percent in the preceding year. The share of new female young subscribers increased 2 portion points to 21.2 per cent of brand-new young customers, whereas those of new young male subscribers decreased marginally from 78.9 per cent to 78.6 per cent in the given time frame. An earlier analysis of the Employees Provident Fund Organisation information by Business Standard, nevertheless, found that the share of youth in the age 18-25 in new formal tasks increased to at least a five-year high of 56 percent in 2022, from 50.9 percent in 2018. By comparison, of a total of 447,480 new subscribers that signed up with NPS under the state federal governments in 2022, only 33.3 per cent of subscribers came from the 18-28-year age group, signing up a 2 percentage point boost from the previous year. The share of girls getting these jobs, nevertheless, decreased to 35.4 per cent in 2022, from 37.1 percent in the preceding year, contrary to the trend seen at the Centre. Handled by the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority, the NPS is created on a defined contribution basis, wherein both the customer and the employer contribute an equivalent amount to his/her account, was made mandatory for all brand-new main government employees from January 1, 2004, except the militaries and thus the NPS information can be utilized as a proxy to assess the number of new tasks created under the main federal government. From April 2018, when the National Statistical Office started launching the regular monthly NPS customer data in conjunction with the Employees Provident Fund payroll and Employees State Insurance Scheme data as part of the federal governments effort to track formal sector work, an overall of 552,510 brand-new tasks have been developed by the main federal government between 2018 and 2022, of which 65.9 percent tasks have actually gone to the youth. A large number of states also adopted NPS, with many states now announcing a turnaround to the OPS, it can not be used as a specific proxy to assess the total number of brand-new tasks developed by all state federal governments. However, between 2018 and 2022, an overall of 2.4 million brand-new tasks were developed by states having NPS, of which youth bagged only 856,978 jobs (36.2 percent). In 2018, the youth share was 35.6 percent. In the Global Employment Trends for Youth 2022 report, the International Labour Organization in 2015 stated the pandemic had actually aggravated the many labour market difficulties dealing with those aged 15-24 years, with younger ones in this group experiencing a much greater portion loss in employment than grownups because early 2020.