Indian White-Collar Job Market Stages Strong Recovery, Grows 89% In August; Hiring Activity Surpasses Pre-Pandemic Levels By 24%

The job market in India has recorded a strong recovery with hiring 89 per cent year-on-year in August 21, according to the a monthly index maintained by popular job portal Naukri.com.

The monthly index calculates and records hiring activity based on newly added job listings on every month.

The index 'Naukri JobSpeak' measures hiring activity across various industries, cities, functional areas and experience levels. July 2008 has been considered as the base with an index value of 1,000 and the subsequent monthly indices are compared to data from July 2008.

In a clear indication that hiring is on the upswing, the index in August also surpassed pre-pandemic levels of same month in 2019 by 24 per cent.

“With a fair share of setbacks in 2020, we can finally acknowledge a trend of overall recovery in the job market. While Jan-May’21 were still in the red compared to pre-pandemic numbers of 2019, we see a positive growth trend starting in June’21" Pawan Goyal, Chief Business Ocer, Naukri.com said,

" IT continues to dominate hiring and industries such as Education, Telecom, BFSI and Insurance are bouncing back too. As a result of increased hiring, the requirement for HR/Admin professionals too has seen a substantial uptick indicative of growth plans across organizations" he added.

IT sector firms led the hiring in the country, registering a growth of 79 per cent in August compared to August 2019. Education sector Jobs also recorded strong recovery with a growth of 102 per cent.

Further, other sectors that have now exceeded pre-pandemic numbers are real estate (15 per cent), telecom (13 per cent), medical and healthcare (8 per cent), pharma and biotech (7 per cent), insurance (6 per cent), and BFSI (5 per cent)

At a city level, hiring in the top six metros grew 39 per cent in August compared with August 2019, led by IT hubs Bengaluru (66 per cent), Hyderabad (61 per cent), Pune (54 per cent), Chennai (30 per cent), Delhi-NCR (16 per cent) and Mumbai (4 per cent).

Meanwhile, tier-2 cities have also been experiencing a gradual recovery, with hiring activity up by 10 percent, led by Ahmedabad (27 per cent) and Chandigarh (23 per cent).

The jobs analysed for the monthly index are qualified on the basis of white-collar jobs belonging to the organized corporate sector with a focus on service industries.