While the global impact of the pandemic and its variants continues to be seen, hiring demand has increased by 10% in the last three months, according to findings published by the Monster Employment Index (MEI). Data from the index indicates that compared to June 2021, July 2021 witnessed an overall monthly growth of 4% in hiring. Overall job postings have also improved by 8% year-on-year (July 2021 vs July 2020), indicating a continued optimistic outlook for the coming months.
July 2021, in line with the previous month, continued to show a favourable outlook for job recovery despite pandemic-led restrictions. The IT hardware, software (39%) industry witnessed the highest year-on-year increase in the hiring of professionals, with notable growth in metropolitan cities. Further, in terms of levels, hiring for top management indicated remarkable growth of 69%, year-on-year (July 2021 vs July 2020), as per the MEI data.
Hiring activity in metropolitan cities such as Bengaluru (57%), Pune (35%), and Chennai (29%) indicates strong growth in recruitment as compared to the previous year (July 2021 vs July 2020). The demand for professionals in software, hardware, telecom functions continues to show an uptrend with a 42% year-on-year increase in job postings nationally, as tracked by MEI, as of July 2021. This is in line with the ongoing demand for digitalisation and tech-enablement across sectors.
Job postings witness a positive uptick in industries that were previously in a slump due to the pandemic
Online hiring demand in July 2021 has grown in 16 out of the 27 industries monitored by the index, in a year-on-year comparison, owing to fluctuations in the pandemic’s impact across different sectors.
Interestingly, job postings in travel and tourism have seen a steep uptick month-on-month (July 2021 vs June 2021) at 16%. This comes as a welcome relief to the industry, which has been facing considerable challenges since the onset of COVID-19. Other industries such as shipping /marine (14%), office equipment/automation (9%) and real estate (9%) have also witnessed a growth in postings in July 2021, compared to the previous month. However, industries such as government/PSU/defence (-1%) and media & entertainment (-3%) have seen a decline in hiring activity, month-on-month.
Healthcare and allied functions see overall declining trend
Healthcare functions have seen a 21% decline in job postings year-on-year (July 2021 vs July 2020). This is despite the spike in hiring that the sector saw immediately after the lockdown easing in June 2020. “While there was a surge in the requirement for healthcare workers during the peak of COVID-19 (June-July 2020), along with increased demand from pharma research companies while the vaccine was being developed, this demand subsequently slipped, and a fluctuating trend has been witnessed in line with the evolving COVID-19 situation,” the findings noted. Overall, hiring activity in the healthcare, biotechnology, and life sciences, pharmaceuticals industry witnessed a 12% decline year-on-year (July 2021 vs July 2020).
“Despite the challenges of COVID-19 and its impact on the hiring landscape, we have seen positive growth in job postings across most cities. Jobs in certain sectors such as Tech and IT are booming, as companies come forward to boost their tech enablement and improve workforce efficiency. While some industries are doing better than others, we can be confident of seeing improvement in the coming months, given the active vaccination drives currently underway. Hiring activity, along with the economy in India, is on the mend as sectoral revival is in progress consistently over the past couple of months,” said Sekhar Garisa, CEO, Monster.com.