2009 has been an aberration
India Today and Ma Foi Management Consultants published a survey in January 2008 that predicted creation of close to a million new jobs during the year. The previous year we had seen a record 1.5 million new jobs getting created in the organised sector. Post the September financial massacre, we had to revise downwards our estimate of new jobs creations to 6.78 lakh in 2008 as the confidence level hit at an all-time low.
We also made another prediction at this time, which got hotly contested by private engineering colleges. Given the dip in organised employment by 30 per cent, our estimate was that campus placements will bear a huge brunt of that. This prediction was based on sound numbers. In 2007, which was the year of soaring salaries and jobs, our estimates showed that 22 per cent of the India’s fresh engineering graduates remain unemployed for one year and 10 per cent remain unemployed for two years. If these are the numbers for a boom year, you were surely going to see an unprecedented dearth of jobs in 2009.
We feared 40 per cent of fresh engineering graduates will be without jobs in 2009. Ma Foi has collated data from 52 Tier I engineering colleges. If we extrapolate on this, I am afraid the number of engineering graduates remaining unemployed will surely be more than 40 per cent. I believe the impact will be most severe on diploma holders and ITIs.
The ripple effect of the last six months will impact net job creation in organised sector in 2009. Our projection puts it at six lakh: the lowest in the last six years. A lot many from campuses will remain unemployed.
How many people are to be picked up from campuses is a decision that is taken in November. In 2008, that was a time of huge uncertainty. However, I believe placement season for Class of 2009 has been an aberration. I don’t see fiscal year 2010 campus placement doing as bad as this year. It will not go back to the big boom days of 2006-2007. From here, we don’t see it going down hugely; there is a revival happening.
K .Pandia Rajan is MD, Ma Foi Group and Randstad India
(As told to Saumya Bhattacharya)
