Hiring activities see uptick in July

The phased reopening and regulated relaxations of many key industries have paved the way for a slight recovery in hiring activities but hiring is still down by 47 per cent in July 2020 compared to the same month last year.

With the nationwide lockdown relaxations and re-opening of key industries, there has been a slight increase in hiring activities during July compared to the previous month, according to according to Naukri JobSpeak Index.

About 1,263 job postings in July marks an improvement of 5 per cent in hiring activities compared to 1,208 in June, as per the Index.

The phased reopening and regulated relaxations of many key industries have paved the way for a slight recovery in hiring activities but hiring is still down by 47 per cent in July 2020 compared to the same month last year, it added.

The Naukri JobSpeak is a monthly index that calculates and records hiring activities based on the job listings on Naukri.com website.

Industries such as hotel, restaurants, airlines and travel witnessed an 80 per cent decline in job postings, while retail was down 71 per cent, real estate 60 per cent and oil and gas and power (58 per cent) in July compared with last year same time, it said.

However, it added that key sectors like business procession outsourcing and IT-enabled services saw a decline of 42 per cent, FMCG 39 per cent, pharma or biotech 38 per cent, IT-hardware 30 per cent and medical or healthcare 20 per cent) in hiring in July this year as compared to the year-ago month.

Given the rise in COVID-19 cases in metros and lockdown in a few places, the hiring activities in big cities declined more than 50 per cent as compared with the national average of a 47 per cent dip, as per the report.

Metro cities such as Chennai saw a 55 per cent decline, Mumbai 54 per cent and Bengaluru 54 per cent in hiring, it said.

Smaller cities such as Chandigarh saw a 28 per cent dip, Jaipur with 25 per cent and Kochi 33 per cent in hiring, it added.

According to the index, recruitment across the board declined at varied experience levels with the entry-level experience bands, up to 3 years of experience, witnessing the sharpest decline of 51 per cent.

It said that key sectors such as recruitment or employment grew by 37 per cent, media and entertainment by 36 per cent and construction and engineering by 27 per cent driving the hiring activities in July compared to June.

Hiring activities in industries such as banking financial services and insurance also went up by 16 per cent, auto (14 per cent), telecom (13 per cent) and IT-hardware (9 per cent), while the IT-software sector was flat sequentially, it added.

The index also suggested that education or teaching with a decline of 22 per cent, hospitality 5 per cent and retail 2 per cent sectors witnessed a dip in hiring activities even in sequential comparisons.

"July 2020 marks a marginal recovery in month-on-month hiring activities," said Naukri.com chief business officer Pawan Goyal.

He added that industries such as recruitment and employment, media and entertainment and construction or engineering bounce back with positive signs in hiring month-on-month as lockdown restrictions are eased further.

While the year-on-year hiring is still impacted leading to a decline of 47 per cent in July, it is interesting to see emerging cities leading the way in job market recovery versus metros which are declining by more than 50 per cent, he added.

Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters