Recovery is driven by large businesses seeking to hire Blue Collar labour as well as leadership level talent, mostly in the metro and tier-1 cities.
Chennai, NFAPost: The nationwide lockdown from the end of March-May due to the Covid-19 pandemic, made business and hiring sentiment sink to an unprecedented low. However, the partial and phased opening up of the economy following Unlock 1.0, has resulted in a gradual and increment in hiring sentiment, which had taken a beating and had sunk by 86% points from the previous half year.
It is now showing signs of gradual improvement and the hiring sentiment has improved from 11% to 18%, according to the new TeamLease Employment Outlook Report (April-September, 2020-21).
Staffing services provider TeamLease has released the report, which is a comprehensive overview of the mechanics of hiring, job growth, job creation, salaries and their drivers, trends and forecasts across 14 cities and 21 sectors in India.
The report carries a snapshot of business hiring sentiment, hiring demand, net new job creation, job creation via back-fills and fresh graduate job creation for the last six months of FY 2020-21 [April 2020 – September 2020] on the basis of the survey and analysis carried out during the preceding five months [October 2019 – March 2020].
While the Intent to Hire plummets to less than a fifth of its value over the past four HYs, a drop of 79%, the small silver of hiring intent is overwhelmingly for Blue Collar workforce and by large businesses, is spread across sectors and in metros and tier-1 cities.
Hands on jobs – shop floor roles, repairs and maintenance, door delivery, and some heavy lifting roles – are likely to be
in significant demand over the current HY, as they were – at a far lesser magnitude – during the lockdown period.
The hiring intent for IT and Office Services jobs seem to have got back on its feet, but trail Blue Collar by a wide margin. Marketing and HR are likely the least hired for among the functions. In the case of Sales, the hiring intent falls to 14% in April-September, 2020-21 from 100% in October-March, 2019-2020.
Bengaluru leads in cities
While Bengaluru leads in cities with 21% intent to hire in April-September 2020-21, Delhi follows with 19%, Hyderabad 15%, and Chandigarh 14%.
The COVID-19 crisis has resulted in a nearly across-the-board fall in attrition rates to half or even a fourth of the rates in the previous HY. Attrition has dropped by less than 30% – 40% for the Health & Pharmaceuticals, Power & Energy,
Information Technology, Knowledge Process Outsourcing and Educational Services sectors.
The biggest fall in the attrition rate – to nearly a fourth or a third of the levels during the previous HY – has been in the Travel & Hospitality sector (from 2.98% in October-March, 2019-20 to 13.79% in April-September, 2019-20), followed by Manufacturing, Engineering & Infrastructure, Construction & Real Estate, FMCG & D, Logistics, Retail and BPO/ITeS sectors.
Attrition rates drop to between nearly half and 40% of the previous HY for the Agriculture & Agrochemicals, Financial
Services, Media & Entertainment (5.31% in October-March, 2019-20 to 13.40% in April-September, 2019-20), Consulting, Marketing & Advertising, and Ecommerce & Technology Start-ups sectors.
The survey covers 807 small, medium and large companies across the 21 sectors across India and 14 businesses across global markets. In India, the coverage is spread across 4 geographical areas [Metros, Tier-1, Tier-2/3 and Rural], 4
hierarchical levels [Entry, Junior, Mid and Senior Levels] and 7 functional areas [Sales, Marketing, Information Technology, Engineering, Office Services, Human Resources, Blue Collar].
Sectoral Impact
The private healthcare sector is staring at a potential operating loss of Rs 14,000 crore to Rs 24,000 crore in the first quarter of FY20-21. The revenues of hospitals and diagnostic companies are currently down by about 60-70%. The report said that FY20-21 revenues will be lower by 20-35% for the sector compared to FY19-20. The intent to hire in the Healthcare and Pharmaceuticals sectors in April -September, 2020-21 is 33%. However, the positive impact is ramping up exports in pharmaceuticals for generic drugs across the globe.
In the case of Educational Services, the pandemic has hit the poorer among students hard in India, and about 86% of them are unable to explore online learning with limited or no internet access, and unaffordable computers. However, positive impact is edtech startups have witnessed 25% uptick in e-learning. The education market is likely to expand by 5-6% in FY20-21 driven mainly by growing enrolments in higher education. Ind-Ra expects the market size of the education sector to touch Rs 6,48,300 crore in FY21. The intent to hire is 27%.
In case of Retail (Essential) sector, it has suffered over Rs 2 lakh crore in lost sales, which puts nearly 2.6 million jobs
at risk. In FY 20-21, the sector is estimated to contract by 17% in value terms and may lose 13% of jobs (1 million). However, the positive impact is an Abu Dhabi investment firm plans to invest nearly Rs 7,600 crore in LuLu Group International. Essential retail is expected to grow by nearly 10% by end of FY21. Job loss in Retail sector is high.
Logistics, FMCG, Media & Entertainment, Financial Services, BPO/ITeS, Construction and Real Estate are among the Bottom sectors where job loss is quite high.
Global Trends
Labour markets, worldwide, witnessed collective mayhem with the pandemic causing Intent to Hire to fall steeply [by 68% – 79%] to barely double digit levels across all five geographic regions for the current HY (April – September,
2020-21)
Lowest Intent to Hire
Americas (8%)
Rest of the regions: incrementally better Intent to Hire
- Europe (9%)
- Africa (10%)
- Middle-East (11%)
- APAC (14%)
