White-collar jobs return; July openings at 2.90 lakh

For the first time since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, white-collar hiring in some of the worst-hit sectors such as travel & tourism, hotel & hospitality, retail & recreation, and automobiles is witnessing signs of a recovery.These sectors posted more than 12,000 active job openings in July alone, showed data from LinkedIn and top company job boards, put together by specialist staffing firm Xpheno.The total number of active jobs in the past month was 290,000, amid resurgence of a wider range of commercial activities, green shoots of hiring in sectors that were lying nearly dormant since the start of the pandemic, as well as more employment opportunities in segments that are on an accelerated growth path.July was also the strongest month so far this financial year in terms of white-collar hiring, adding more than double the number of jobs compared with a year earlier. Full-time opportunities reported at 270,000 were also the highest in 18 months.“The restart of commercial activities across a larger spectrum is nursing some of the worst-hit sectors back to health,” Xpheno cofounder Kamal Karanth said.“The waking up of these sectors, who are large consumers of talent, is putting more active jobs into the mix. Hiring action is expected to rise further as these sectors reboot for a near-term recovery and long-term calibration for stability,” said Karanth.Online travel company MakeMyTrip currently has 200 open positions. “Business recovery across all segments including flights, hotels, cabs, train and holidays picked a consistent week-on-week momentum in June, and grew stronger in July… We are aggressively acquiring talent at all levels for technology, product, design and revenue management,” a spokesperson said.Industry experts and economists said though the number of jobs regained in services is still low compared with the thousands of jobs lost in these sectors, the fact that there is some hiring activity after a long pause is a positive sign for the job market.“The fact that there is white-collar hiring in some of the services sectors shows that people are seeing some light ahead of the tunnel. It shows that these industries may be preparing for more opening up in the future,” said Madan Sabnavis, chief economist at Care Rating.“This may be based on the assumption that even if there is a third wave, we won’t see major clampdowns on economic activities and things may not be that bad,” he said. “However, the hiring numbers will not be big unless there are signs of things opening up further.”Top hiring sectors are the ones that also account for a bulk of white-collar jobs, including information technology, IT-enabled services, ecommerce and platform-based companies, besides banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI). The technology sector put out 230,000 active vacancies in July, the highest count in the past 18 months.“All large and mid-cap technology companies have done well and are looking at double-digit growth given the upsurge in demand for digital transformation,” said Nitin Bhatt, technology sector leader, EY India. “This is at a time when there is a huge attrition problem facing these companies. Indeed, employee retention is top-of-mind for all CEOs today. All these factors are leading to a huge unfulfilled need for technology talent,” he said. “For example, there is a skyrocketing demand for professionals in data science, cybersecurity, cloud solutions as well as various other niche digital skills.”India’s top five metros — Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Hyderabad — posted the highest ever job count since the onset of the pandemic with 127,000 openings in July. Out of the 165,000 jobs that were available outside the top five cities, an estimated 80,000 were at more than 60 tier 2 cities, showed the data.CEOs and job market experts said much of the recovery will hinge on the progress of vaccination, even though companies are better prepared to handle possible future disruptions due to the pandemic.“The job market is headed for considerable improvement … Vaccination will be a key factor in restoring confidence,” Mahendra Singhi, managing director at Dalmia Cement, told ET in a recent interaction.

from Economic Times https://ift.tt/3C5NPJr