Hiring activity at all-time high crossing pre-COVID levels; grows 11 pc sequentially in Jul: Report

Hiring activity in the country touched an all-time high in July, witnessing a 11 percent sequential increase, and indicating a strong revival of economic growth and a recovery of business from the impact of COVID-19, a report said on Friday.

With 2,625 job postings, hiring trends grew 11 percent in July compared with 2,359 postings in June, the highest it has ever been, including the pre-COVID-19 timeline, according to the report by Naukri JobSpeak.

The Indian job market has witnessed sequential growth for the second month in a row, with a 15 percent rise in June, after the pandemic-linked decline in April and May, it stated.

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

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According to the report, as businesses continued to ride the wave of digitisation, the IT-software or software services sector maintained its growth momentum with an 18 percent increase in July compared to June.

Almost all sectors registered positive growth in July contributing to the 11 percent growth in hiring activity, bringing cheer to job seekers, said the report.

Sectors that were severely hit by the movement restrictions during the pandemic continued to show growth in hiring for the second month in a row, including hotels, restaurants, airlines and travel (36 percent) as well as retail (17 percent).

Accounting and taxation with 27 percent, FMCG (17 percent), banking and financial services (13 percent) and education and teaching (8 percent) also saw positive sequential upswing in hiring activity during the same period.

The pharma, biotech and clinical research sector saw a marginal drop of 5 percent in jobs, while the media, dotcom and entertainment sector dropped 15 percent in July.

Naukri.com Chief Business Officer Pawan Goyal said, "July has provided conclusive proof of the revival of hiring activity in the country, after a setback in April and May. Not only has it increased by 11 percent in July, but the Naukri JobSpeak Index has reached an all-time high in this month, even surpassing pre-COVID-19 levels."

He added that the most noteworthy and consistent growth over the past few months belongs to the information technology (IT) and IT-enabled sectors and the tech functional area, which has stayed relatively insular to the effects of the pandemic.

This demonstrates that digital transformation of Indian businesses is well underway and central to recovery efforts after the pandemic, he said.

Meanwhile, the report further showed that as there was a growing importance of digital transformation of businesses, it resulted in double-digit growth in hiring during July compared with June in prominent IT hubs like Bengaluru (17 percent), Hyderabad (16 percent) and Pune (13 percent).

India's megacities, Delhi/NCR (13 percent) and Mumbai (10 percent), also kept up with similar growth, while hiring in Chennai and Kolkata grew 10 percent and 4 percent, respectively.

Among the smaller cities, Coimbatore with 24 percent and Jaipur with 11 percent clocked positive growth, while Ahmedabad was the only city to record negative numbers of 3 percent in July.

The report found that while IT-software roles enjoyed high demand and grew 16 percent in July compared to the previous month, most functional areas continued to recover and build on the positive growth shown in June.

Sectors like hospitality with 44 percent and travel with 42 percent growth bounced back in July and sales/business development (15 percent), HR/administration (11 percent) and accounts/finance (10 percent) also saw a sequential rise in hiring activity in the last one month.

The Naukri JobSpeak index for July reported 9 percent and 4 percent growth in the banking and insurance as well as teaching and education roles, respectively.

Hiring in the marketing, advertising, MR and PR (4 percent) domain also increased, while pharma and biotech roles showed a marginal three percent degrowth in July compared to June, it added.