The post-Covid job market is buzzing

The job market in India is buzzing after the Covid-19 slump, driven by robust hiring activity across several sectors as opportunities have opened up for a transitioning workforce even as employee mindset itself has changed since the pandemic broke out. 

Hiring demand witnessed a 6 per cent year-on-year growth in March 2022, according to the Monster Employment Index (MEI) released on Tuesday. After rising steadily from April 2021 to September 2021, the index has gone up and down between October 2021 and March 2022, hitting a peak of 290 in February 2022.  

While the March 2022 index saw a month-on-month decline of 6 per cent to 283 – Monster attributes it to employees sticking around in their current jobs due to the appraisal season – it has risen a moderate 6 per cent from 266 in March 2021, just before the second wave of Covid-19 hit. 

Recruitment activity continued across a broad range of sectors, but tech, finance and HR roles continue to be in high demand and drove the hiring demand in March 2022, the findings showed.  Banking/Financial Services and Insurance showed remarkable improvement (up 37 per cent), followed by Telecom/ISP (up 17 per cent) and Production and Manufacturing (up 16 per cent). Additionally, jobs rebounded for Hospitality & Travel (up 11%) personnel after a long time and experienced significantly improved demand levels annually. 

Meanwhile, blue-collar jobs also witnessed a similar trend. While IT and Logistic sectors witnessed the highest hiring momentum for the rising workforce, beauty & wellness and hospitality sectors recorded 80 and 30 per cent increases in job openings, respectively, in the Jan-March quarter of 2022 compared to the same time last year, according to data from blue-collar jobs portal apna.co released on Tuesday. 

This was not the case last year, when sectors such as healthcare, delivery, e-commerce were booming while other sectors had a fairly low employment rate in the wake of the second wave of Covid-19 infections. 

Furthermore, the portal said, Indians took more than 3 crore interviews during January-March 2022. That’s a 13.71 per cent jump compared to the October-December 2021 quarter, the portal said. 

It also noted an increased participation by women in the workforce as they attended more than one crore interviews, a 20 per cent jump compared to the previous quarter. Apart from the traditional roles, women also applied for roles such as delivery person, security guards, drivers, chefs/bakers, IT support, civil engineers, fitness instructors etc, it said. 

The platform, which has 22 million users and 200,000 employers, said it registered 4.8 million new professionals in the last three months. 

This comes against the backdrop of Indians emerging as one of the most likely to prioritise health and wellbeing over work than before the pandemic with nearly 7 in 10 saying so as employees now have a new 'worth it' equation where what people want from work and what they're willing to give in return has changed, according to findings from Microsoft's annual report, '2022 Work Trend Index', released last month.  Besides, the study found, 65 per cent Indians planning to change jobs this year, up from 62 per cent in 2021. 

Also read: Lack of workplace flexibility is making Indian women miserable: LinkedIn report

Also read: Hiring activity sees 6% on-year growth in Mar; beats COVID slump: Monster index