While the pandemic has brought a lot of bad news on the health front, news of job losses have also made headlines. The lockdown brought the economy to a grinding halt and that affected jobs to a large extent. Things have slightly improved with Unlock 1 and 2, but it will be a while before the job market is again at pre-pandemic levels.
Says Kamal Karanth, Co-Founder at specialist staffing firm Xpheno, “Unlock 2.0 opened with a slightly moderated enthusiasm in the organised job market, as compared to what was witnessed in 1.0. While June and early July saw a cleanup of some of the long-trailing job openings resulting in lesser active job counts, a slower top-up of new jobs only compounded the situation. An overall 35 per cent reduction in active openings over three-month period should be read in the context of a general slowdown in business activity across sectors.”
He adds that the total active job openings dropped from 200K in April to 167K in May and the closing figures for June was hovering at 132K. Early data indicators for July seem to point towards a climb to similar numbers as of May 2020. If the trend continues for rest of July and sustains for August, we will be possibly looking at the first V-shaped recovery graphs in the job market. We will have to wait a little longer to see if June 2020 was the true dip point in the jobs opportunities graph for now.
Amit Agarwal, Managing Partner, Regional Specialisation Leader CFO Practice, Stanton Chase, an executive search consultant, sounds optimistic. “The pandemic had its impact on the hiring and recruitment industry. As we move into the unlock phases, certain sectors and functions are seeing an upswing in hiring while the others are still struggling. While the pendulum is still tilted towards negativity at the moment, the scenario is likely to get better by next quarter,” says Agarwal.
“In terms of new jobs, we have seen a new segment around health and safety that has opened up, which is fuelling demand for verification, sanitisation and security personnel,” says Tarun Sinha, Head of OLX People (HBU). While few marquee brands announced layoff plans over the last two weeks, few others have been revoking fresher offers and postponing fresher hiring plans. While a market-wise hiring freeze cannot be declared, what can be said is that more enterprises are calibrating their hiring plans for the year. “The pandemic has created huge uncertainties about the future with most industries laying-off their employees to sustain themselves in the longer run. Fashion, hospitality, real estate, retail, auto, and travel-tourism have been massively hit and are seeing layoffs, alrhough the situation is getting better if we talk about the job scenario today as compared to the scenario two months back,” says Agarwal.
Larger enterprises are seen playing their cards closer to the chest when it comes to hiring outlook for rest of the year. Despite these conditions, new job openings continue to be announced and seen actively accepting applicants. “With over 40K jobs being refreshed and reposted over the week, the fact remains that the hiring funnel is still warm and hasn’t frozen to a halt,” he says. While the job market has been affected as a whole, fresher hiring has also borne the brunt. While some of the top colleges have already done their placements even before the lockdown, Tier 2 and 3 colleges are struggling. According to fresher hiring portal Firstnaukri.com, almost 44 per cent graduates who had a job offer said that their joining dates have been deferred while 9 per cent said that their employment has been rolled back. About 33 per cent said that the employees are nor responding to them on the status of their job offers. However, recently TCS announced that they will hire 40,000 freshers from campuses, while Infosys said they will hire 20,000.
“Companies are still looking to hire fresh talent. While these are challenging times for job seekers, there is no blanket freeze in the industry. Firms continue to hire fresh talent, however, they are being cautious at every step. Hence, it is crucial for freshers to keep an eye out for the sectors that are showing recovery and scope in the near future as well as in the long term,” says Sinha. As per their data, the top sectors that are hiring freshers include IT/Software, e-commerce, banking, insurance, financial services, and recruitment/staffing.
The question on many people’s minds is if the worse is over and how soon will we be back to pre-lockdown levels. With cases rising rapidly in the country, things may not improve till next year. Says Agarwal, “These are unprecedented times that we are facing. It is still very difficult to anticipate when the situation will improve. The entire job market scenario is dependent on how soon the situation around the pandemic improves, the sooner we manage the situation, the easier it is for the market to improve.” The longer the situation takes to improve, the larger would be the impact.
Agrees Amit Vadera, Head Staffing - BFSI & Govt, TeamLease Services, a human resource provider, “This is difficult to predict, however based on my discussion with about 100 Industry leaders in last three months - timeline will differ from company to company and it looks like this would take anywhere between 6-18 months from now.”
However, Sinha is confident that the green shoots are back. ‘We are witnessing recovery across industries, and the jobs market is getting back to normal,” he says. As per the economic think tank Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), the unemployment rate fell to its pre-lockdown level of 8.5 per cent in the week ended June 21, led by big gains in the rural areas. With the festive season coming up, the demand for consumer goods is further expected to boost the economy. We are positive that by the end of this quarter, India will be
back on track. As per OLX People’s Employer Sentiment Survey, more than 50 per cent of businesses expect to completely recover by the month of October this year.