COVID-19 impact: Employment in India on way to recovery, but still a long way to go, shows study

Overall, the month of March has seen an year-on-year decline of 10% in job postings.

Employment trends in India: Job posting activity across various sectors in the last quarter has increased by 4%, even as March 2021 witnessed a drop of 2% as compared to February this year, the Monster Employment Index, conducted by Monster.com has found. However, certain industries witnessed significant growth in the month as compared to February. These include courier/freight/transportation which grew 19% month-on-month, printing and packaging, which showed an increase of 5%, and office equipment/automation, which also increased by 5%. Moreover, in terms of year-on-year growth as compared to March 2020, agro-based industries grew 12%, while logistics/courier grew 9%. Telecom/ISP marked an year-on-year increase of 8%, while IT hardware and software increased by 5%.

A positive month-on-month trend in job postings was noticed in Bengaluru and Pune, which saw an uptrend of 2% and 1%, respectively.

Meanwhile, in terms of year-on-year comparisons, Bengaluru saw a growth of 14%, Hyderabad of 6%, and Pune of 2% in March 2021 vis-a-vis March 2020.

On the other hand, the banking/financial services and insurance sector saw a month-on-month decline of 6% in job postings, and this figure was the same for production and manufacturing. Telecom/ISP and media and entertainment sectors declined 4% month-on-month.

Overall, the month of March has seen an year-on-year decline of 10% in job postings, in which the travel and tourism sector was the worst-hit, witnessing a decline of 59%. Education sector saw a 37% decline year-on-year, while the oil/gas/petroleum and power sector declined by 33%. While BPO/ITES fell by 27%, the retail industry saw a 23% decline in March 2021 as compared to March 2020.

In terms of cities, Hyderabad saw a 1% decline in job postings in March 2021, as compared to February 2021, while Ahmedabad witnessed a fall of 4%. This figure of decline was 5% for Jaipur and 2% for Delhi-NCR. As far as the year-on-year trend is concerned, Kolkata saw the maximum decline in March 2021, recording a decline of 29% in job postings, while Baroda saw an 18% decrease. Mumbai’s job postings fell by 16%.

Moreover, in March, the postings for entry-level jobs declined by 3% as compared to February 2021, while job postings for top management professionals rose by 4% month-on-month and that for senior management professionals increased by 1%.

The year-on-year trend indicates that job postings for entry-level profiles declined by 16% in March 2021, while the postings seeking professionals having over 15 years of experience rose by a whopping 27%.

These widely varying trends are indicative of how, while employment is on its way to recovery in India, there is still a long way to go before pre-COVID levels can be achieved. This is evident by disparity in the figures of growth and figures of decline in the industries. The index also shows the tough path that fresh graduates are facing, considering the sharp decline the entry-level job postings have seen.