Overall hiring activity has touched pre-COVID levels in India due to reopening of economy and efforts by businesses to navigate the challenges presented by COVID-19. Further job growth in India will be driven by consumption economy, as per an Indeed report. This is the first time in months that hiring activity has reached the pre-pandemic baseline or February 2020 level.
“The reopening of the economy and the efforts by businesses to work around the challenges presented by COVID-19 have pushed the Indian job market towards recovery,” says Indeed India Head of Sales Sashi Kumar. He also mentioned while relevance of tech jobs continues to be high, renewed demand for retail and food jobs highlights that consumption economy is going to drive job growth in India.
The report also states that job postings for IT tech software roles rose by 19 per cent between July 2020-July 2021 on the back of more and more people embracing digitisation due to the COVID-19 crisis. Postings for other IT job roles like engineer and project head also saw a hike of 8-16 per cent.
Job roles in food and retail sectors jacked up by 52 per cent and 39 per cent respectively while demand for HR and finance roles rose by 27 per cent each during July 2020-July 2021.
“Meanwhile, hygiene clearly has become a top priority for both employers and job seekers. What’s curious is the heightened interest for veterinary, therapy, personal care and childcare jobs – a trend that seemingly indicates a significant shift in the priorities of job seekers. Recovery at this pace or even faster would be excellent,” the report noted. Relaxation of lockdown restrictions and consequent reopening raised focus on hygiene and sanitisation. Thus, the demand for cleaners, housekeepers and caretakers grew by 60 per cent during the same period.
There, however, was a decline in interest for roles in industries like aviation (-25 per cent), media (-19 per cent), accounting (-8 per cent), customer relations (-7 per cent) and admin (-6 per cent) among job seekers between July 2020-July 2021.
Edited by Mehak Agarwal; with PTI inputs
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