Salary Hikes At Firms Inching Closer To Pre-Covid Levels: Report

E-commerce and tech start-ups, healthcare, and allied industries plan salary hikes of more than 10 per cent.

Ahmedabad, NFAPost: Median increments in FY 2022 have been around 8.13 per cent to inching closer to pre-Covid levels, said supply chain company TeamLease Services in its India’s Jobs and Salary Primer Report. The median increment in the previous study stood at 7.12 per cent.

Of the 17 sectors the report reviewed, 14 have indicated a single digit hike while e-commerce and tech start-ups, healthcare and allied industries, and Information Technology (IT) & knowledge services are the only three sectors to register a salary growth greater than 10 per cent.

Backed by in-depth research covering jobs and payout trends across eight functions, 263,000 temp profiles, 17 industries and nine cities, the report found that employers are not shying away from rewarding skills, especially niche skills. For instance, the salary hike for super-specialised job roles range between 11% and 12%.

Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Pune were amongst the top paying cities with increments of 12% and above. The report also found that most of the sectors had recovered from the Covid induced slump sectors, with 10 out of 17 indicating a progression rate of 7-10 per cent with the rest growing at 5%-7%.

Rituparna Chakraborty, TeamLease Services’ co-founder and executive vice president, said that while the increments were yet to reach the double digit hikes, the phase of salary de-growth and stagnation that had been hovering across the job market in the last two years was nearing its end.

“The revival coupled with the growing appetite for roles across profiles and sectors indicate that the modest approach will soon taper off and push the increments to reach the pre-covid level,” she said.

Among its key findings, the report saw a growing interest from India Inc towards ‘hot and upcoming’ jobs such as cutting-edge, new-age roles that keep businesses ahead of the curve. As per the report, while in FY 2020-21 only five out of the 17 sectors had created such hot jobs, close to nine sectors created the same in FY 2021-22.

In terms of functions, sales and IT roles continued to dominate even as entire sectors were transitioning towards pre-Covid levels, making the two functions remain critical for the current phase of return to normalcy. As a result, average salary growth for sales profiles stood 7.41 per cent while that for IT profiles was 9.23%.

Similarly, certain profiles emerged as fastest growing ones in terms of salary growth led by R&D analyst in healthcare & pharmaceuticals at 9.39 per cent, network engineer in IT & knowledge services at 9.33% and AutoCAD engineer in automobile & allied industry at 9.05%, among others.

Meanwhile, in terms of work from home (WFH), the report found sectors like BPO & ITeS, e-commerce & tech startups, educational services, IT & knowledge services likely to benefit from WFH profiles on account of business continuity.

On the contrary, sectors like agriculture and agrochemicals, automobile & allied industry, banking, financial services & insurance (BFSI), healthcare & pharmaceuticals, and FMCG & retail, were unlikely to benefit from such roles.