3.75 lakh jobs could be up for grabs in core sectors this year

CHENNAI: While the debate on job creation in India — among the worst in the country’s history — has been handicapped due of lack of regular and credible data, executive search firms peg that at least 3.75 lakh jobs will be up for grabs across sectors this year.The core sector has shown an uptick in hiring in the past few months and the trend is expected to continue for the rest of 2018, while the services sector, experts say, has experienced a dip in hiring vis-a-vis the core sector on the back of continued weakness in banking sector, the transformational changes affecting IT industry and a depressed telecom sector. Meanwhile, jobs offered by MNCs for overseas positions have drastically reduced this year, owing to issues like H1-B approval by the US.

“The economy has stabilised considerably post the twin effects of demonetisation and GST in 2017; the hiring outlook for 2018 is optimistic with an increased focus on moving up the value chain from a skills perspective,” said Paul Dupuis, MD and CEO, Randstad India. “We anticipate that the demand for professionals with new age skills will be on the rise. About 3.75 lakh high-skilled and new age jobs would be created across the IT, manufacturing, pharma and energy sectors through 2018-19,” he said.

Manufacturing will be a net creator of jobs, said Dupuis, adding that the sector will create about two lakh formal jobs with several defence, heavy industry and electronics assembly units expected to go live this year, fostering demand for R&D/production engineers and operations professionals. According to Randstad estimates, the IT sector is likely to add 1.5 lakh jobs in new age skills like artificial intelligence, blockchain, machine learning and robotics.

On a similar vein, Rituparna Chakraborty of Team Lease said the country needs 10 key policy and regulatory changes to add formal jobs at a healthy clip. These reforms include Unique Enterprise Number, Employee Salary Choice, consolidation of 44 Central labour laws into four labour codes, Adoption of The Model Shops and Establishments Act, The Factories Amendment Bill 2016, Small Factories Act, Amendments in Contract Labour and Regulation Act 1970, Amendments in Industrial Disputes Act 1947, PPC Compliance Portal and complete digitisation of all registrations/licenses/renewals and special approvals process. “We estimate that regulatory changes can raise the share of formal employment from the current 10 per cent to nearly 40 per cent and create one crore jobs in the span of three years,” she added.

Staffing and HR services firm CIEL HR Services pegs the number of jobs to be created this financial year at 15 lakh topped by financial services. Additionally, FMCG and retail will generate 70,000 jobs backed by demand from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities. “We see a movement of traditional, long-standing FMCG and retail companies towards organised retail,” said Aditya Narayan Mishra, CEO of the firm.