In what could be a silver lining in India’s employment scenario, the country has been recording a steady rise in blue-collar job opportunities, driven by telecom and logistics sectors.
There are as much as 13.54-lakh blue-collar jobs up for grabs as of mid-May, an increase from 13.15 lakh in April and 9.42-lakh jobs in March, and whopping increase from 5.84-lakh openings in December. Telecom led the pack in May, with 2.67 lakh jobs on-the-offer, followed by logistics at 2.23 lakh, apparel at 1.30 lakh and retail at 1.28 lakh, according to listings on Aatmanirbhar Skilled Employee Employer Mapping (ASEEM) portal.
Logistics, apparels and retail had topped the charts during the previous months.
ASEEM was launched in July 2020 by the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship to help skilled people find livelihood opportunities. The portal was developed by Bengaluru-based Betterplace Safety Solutions in collaboration with National Skill Development Corporation.
“Industrial activities picked up after the initial lockdown was lifted. Pent-up market demand post the first lockdown led to sectors such as logistics, apparel and retail seeing a disproportionate jump in job requirements due to increased economic activity. We even saw the demand for tourism and hospitality sector jobs rising when the curbs for this sector were lifted. Delivery executives are in high demand in essential services delivery such as food, groceries and medicines,” Manish Pansari, Chief Business Officer at Betterplace told BusinessLine.
“We have seen telecom players adding requirements to the ASEEM portal for job roles such as field sales and customer care executives. In addition to this, many national staffing agencies have also added their requirements of telecom-related jobs on the portal,” he added.
Tamil Nadu leads
The highest demand for blue-collar jobs of 29.2 per cent is from Tamil Nadu, followed by Karnataka (20.3 per cent), Maharashtra (9.7 per cent), Delhi (8.1 per cent) and Uttar Pradesh (4.7 per cent). These five States contributed 69.7 per cent. Openings for field sales executives, courier delivery executives, retail sales associates, two-wheeler delivery associates and basic emergency medical technician topped the charts.
There is an estimated 40 crore blue-collar and 15 crore white-collar workers in India. Blue-collar jobs - working-class persons who perform manual labour – involve both skilled and unskilled labour across sectors such as farming, construction, shipping, trucking, manufacturing and excavation, among others.