Coronavirus Impact: India Hiring Slumps By 18% In March, Delhi-NCR Most Affected

The job market across cities recorded a drop in hiring activity. Recruitment activities across all experience levels saw negative growth.

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New Delhi: Overall hiring activity in India has declined due to the nationwide lockdown imposed in the country and the decline rate is by 18 percent in March, Naukri.com has stated. As with travel and airlines, hospitality and retail industries have been witnessing a massive 56 percent drop in offering jobs as compared to March last year. The retail sector saw 50 percent drop in hiring, followed by auto/ancillary (38 percent), pharma (26 percent), insurance (11 percent), accounting/finance (10 percent), IT-software (9 percent) and BFSI (9 percent), according to the ''Naukri JobSpeak Index'' for March 2020. Pawan Goyal, Chief Business Officer at Naukri.com the leading job portal says the hiring activity for the first 20 days in March 2020 saw only a 5 percent decline. He added, "However, due to the nationwide lockdown, there was a substantial drop in recruitment activity in the last 10 days, which resulted in an overall drop of 18 percent in hiring,". The early signs pf slowdown were getting reflected from starting from January where the index grew by only 5.75 percent, followed by no growth in February. The job market across cities recorded a drop in hiring activity. The decline was led by metros, wherein Delhi declined by 26 percent, followed by Chennai and Hyderabad at 24 percent and 18 percent, respectively. In Delhi/NCR, the pharma industry saw a dip in hiring by 66 percent and 43 percent, respectively. Recruitment activities across all experience levels saw negative growth. The demand for professionals in hospitality (63 percent), banking (28 percent), accounting (23 percent) and IT-Hardware (22 percent) sectors marked a substantial negative growth in the Capital. Overall, there was an across the board decline in hiring activity at experience levels as well with senior experience bands (over 13 years of experience) witnessing the sharpest decline of 29 percent while the entry-level experience band (0 to 7 years) saw a decline of 16 percent. Some of the key industries like IT, BPO/ITES, BFSI and accounting/finance that form a significant base of hiring activity in India within the white-collar segment have shown a lesser decline during these unprecedented times. As compared to the overall ''JobSpeak'' index decline of 18 percent during March 2020, the hiring activity in the IT-software industry declined by 9 percent, IT-hardware by 7 percent, accounting/finance by 10 percent, BFSI by 9 percent and BPO/ITES by 1 percent. New jobs for professionals in the hotel/restaurants, ticketing/travel/airlines and marketing/advertising/MR/PR sectors witnessed a decline of 51 percent, 48 percent, and 33 percent, respectively. Functional roles in HR/administration (29 percent), banking/insurance (23 percent), sales/business development (20 percent) and IT-software (16 percent) also witnessed a decline. Pawan Goyal said, "It is a great time for jobseekers to upskill themselves by leveraging e-learning," said Goyal". (with inputs from IANS)