PM Viksit Bharat Rozgar Yojana: How India Pays Employers and First-Time Workers to Grow Formal Jobs
The Pradhan Mantri Viksit Bharat Rozgar Yojana (PMVBRY) is India's biggest scheme that pays money for creating formal jobs. Its total budget (outlay) is ₹99,446 crore.
It pays two groups: first-time workers who join a job registered with the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), and employers who hire extra workers and keep them.
The scheme covers jobs created between 1 August 2025 and 31 July 2027. The target is more than 3.5 crore jobs, including about 1.92 crore first-time workers.
Manufacturing (factories) gets a special deal: employers there get the hiring incentive for up to four years instead of two.
Official reports say that over 72 lakh first-time workers joined the formal workforce in the scheme's first year, and nearly 30% of them were women.
The scheme is run by the Ministry of Labour and Employment through the EPFO. Money goes straight into bank accounts, so there is no middleman.
Pradhan Mantri Viksit Bharat Rozgar Yojana (PMVBRY)
The Pradhan Mantri Viksit Bharat Rozgar Yojana (PMVBRY) is a Government of India scheme that gives money to encourage formal jobs. A formal job is one where the worker is registered with the EPFO and gets benefits like a provident fund. The scheme pays a one-time reward to young people who take their first formal job. It also pays a monthly reward to employers for every extra worker they hire and keep. It was earlier called the Employment Linked Incentive (ELI) Scheme.
The scheme is now in the middle of its two-year hiring window. It shows the government's choice to fight joblessness by paying for formal hiring rather than creating jobs itself, with an extra push for factory jobs.
Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO)
The Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) is a statutory body under the Ministry of Labour and Employment that runs India's main retirement savings system for salaried workers. Every month, the worker and the employer each put a part of the salary into the worker's provident fund (PF) account. This money earns interest and is given back at retirement or in some emergencies. A worker becomes part of the "formal" workforce in official data when they join the EPFO.
PMVBRY works entirely through EPFO records. EPFO decides who is a "first-time" worker, counts the extra hires of each employer and sends the money, so the scheme's success will show up first in EPFO's new-member numbers.
India's Labour Market Structure: Formal vs. Informal Employment
Formal employment means work that is protected: the worker has a written contract, paid leave and social security such as a provident fund, pension or health insurance. Informal employment means work without these protections. In India, a very large share of workers, around 90% by most estimates, are in informal employment. Moving workers from informal to formal work is called formalisation, and it is one of the biggest goals of India's labour policy.
PMVBRY is a direct attempt to shift India's labour market from informal to formal work. By paying first-time EPFO members and employers who add formal workers, it targets exactly the gap the PLFS shows: too few regular jobs with social security.
- PMVBRY outlay: ₹99,446 crore; Cabinet approval 1 July 2025 (as the ELI Scheme)
- Jobs covered: those created between 1 August 2025 and 31 July 2027
- Target: more than 3.5 crore jobs, including about 1.92 crore first-time workers
- Part A: up to ₹15,000 (one month's EPF wage) for first-time EPFO members earning up to ₹1 lakh a month; paid in two instalments
- Part B: up to ₹3,000 per month per extra worker; 2 years generally, 4 years in manufacturing
- Minimum extra hires: 2 for firms with fewer than 50 workers, 5 for firms with 50 or more
- Over 72 lakh first-time workers joined in the first year; nearly 30% women
- Origin: Budget 2024-25 PM package of five schemes, ₹2 lakh crore, 4.1 crore youth over 5 years