Growth revival: Hiring gains momentum, outpaces pre-Covid levels in July

The Indian job market registered an 11% growth in July over June when it grew 15%. This is the second straight month of growth after a pandemic-linked fall in April and May 2021.

Hiring momentum gathered further pace in July, surpassing the pre-Covid levels and indicating a revival in growth and hinting at a sustained recovery in business activity after the impact of Covid-19.

The Indian job market registered an 11% growth in July over June when it grew 15%. This is the second straight month of growth after a pandemic-linked fall in April and May 2021. According to Naukri JobSpeak report, its index on hiring trends touched 2,625, the highest it has ever been, including the pre-Covid timeline.

As in the past few months, the growth has been driven by the increasing need for businesses to digitise their operations. The IT-software or software services sector maintained its steady and upward growth with an 18% month-on-month increase in July, surpassing growth levels of 11% in June and 14% in May. In June this sector had see a growth of 52% over June 2019 or in pre-pandemic times.

Pawan Goyal, chief business officer, Naukri.com, said July 2021 has provided conclusive proof of the revival of hiring activity after a setback in April and May. “The most noteworthy and consistent growth over the last few months belongs to the IT/ITES and the tech functional areas, which has stayed relatively insular to the Covid effects. This demonstrates digital transformation of Indian businesses is well underway and central to recovery efforts after the pandemic,” he said.
According to findings from Xpheno, with over 2.90 lakh active white-collar jobs, July overtook June to emerge as the strongest month in FY22. Also, the closing figures for July 2021 were twice those of July 2020, which had a closing figure of just under 1.42 lakh, coming in right after the lowest point of 1.32 lakh of June 2020.

The 105% growth in active jobs on a year-on-year basis is an indication of a strong recovery in play, the Bengaluru-based specialist staffing firm observed. The count of jobs that were active, refreshed and accepted by applicants in July was 2.9 lakh, as against 2.7 lakh in June and 2.05 lakh in May.

Kamal Karanth, co-founder, Xpheno, said the closing figures for July matched those for March 2021 and were the highest count over the 12 month period. However, the growth in July is more broad-based versus that in March, which was driven by the buoyancy of a financial year end.

“The climb in July was largely powered by collective action across more recovering sectors. Sleeping giants like travel & tourism, hotel & hospitality, retail & recreation have gently woken up to join the market action. The restart of a wider range of commercial activities across a larger geography brought in more green shoots in hiring activity,” Karanth said.

To be sure, the all-round recovery has been sustained for the second month in a row, according to Naukri.com. Hotels, restaurants, travel and airlines registered a more than 36% m-o-m growth in hiring, retail grew over 17%. Hiring activity in accounting/taxation was up 27%, in FMCG it increased by 17%, banking/financial services witnessed growth of 13% and education/teaching was up 8%, compared to June 2021. The pharma, biotech and clinical research sector, however, witnessed a marginal drop of 5% in jobs while the media, dotcom and entertainment sector suffered a sharper blow as the hiring dropped by 15% in July 2021.

Hiring data for all experience bands continued to remain positive. The freshers band of 0-3 years saw the highest growth at 14% in July versus June. Senior professionals belonging to the 4-7 years band increased 11%, hiring in 8-12 years experience band increased 9%, 13-16 years saw a growth of 5% and a 4% rise in hiring for people in more than 16 year work experience.

However, according to Karanth, the surge seen in July could well be “calm before the storm”, as there is caution in the air with the fear of a third wave of the pandemic looming large. “With enterprises looking up to the July-September period as the performing quarter before the festive Q3, hiring volume and hiring velocity were expected to be on a positive high. Unless dampened by a shocker of a thirds wave, markets will sustain buoyancy and are well set to capitalise on a trajectory of continued recovery. While some macro indicators have been revised and reduced for the current year, these may not be seen directly impacting action levels in the near term,” he said.