Hiring boom continues: India registers 9% YoY growth this May: Monster Employment Index

The job market continued to show growth for the second consecutive month of FY23 with a benchmark year-on-year recovery of 9% in May 2022. With the rapid adoption of emerging tech across sectors in India, the country has come a long way to achieve post pandemic recovery, highlights the Monster Employment Index (MEI).

However, amid worries over high inflation driving up costs due to the current socio-economic scenario globally, the Index levelled down by 4% month-on-month reflecting cautious recruiter sentiments this month.

Industries such as Telecom, BFSI, and Import/Export have exhibited optimistic job trends contributing to the overall annual growth in job posting activity. The same has been reflected in the Index as 22 out of 27 industries monitored showed an uptick in demand as compared to the year-ago level. It is also heartening to see Tier-2 cities well on their way to post-pandemic recovery with significant growth numbers while Tier 1 cities continue to fuel growth.

Commenting on job trends for the month of May 2022, Sekhar Garisa, CEO – Monster.com, a Quess company said, “The beginning of FY23 has shown positive hiring scales given the anticipated 5G rollout and the recovery of several business segments across the country. So far, the Indian job market is faring well despite the current sentiment on sobered hiring. Recruiters have not scaled down their ambitions to hire talent and there is most definitely unmet demand in the market today. In terms of the job outlook, businesses will continue to grow, and we see this demand reflected in segments such as Import/ Export, Telecom, Travel & Hospitality and BFSI, which continue to grow on the back of growing digitization efforts.”

Import/Export industries see increased job demand

With the pandemic behind us and supply chains back in place, Import/Export witnessed a rise in job postings for talent by 47%, the highest ever increase recorded over the past year for this segment. Furthermore, in line with the new wave of digitization, cashless payments and digital money, job postings in BFSI (up 38 percent) stayed steady, followed closely by Telecom/ISP (up 36 percent) which will witness further job amplification on the back of the anticipated 5G rollout in India.

Travel and Tourism (up 29 percent) has exhibited a full recovery surpassing marginal and even negative escalation patterns observed over the last four quarters. In fact, the segment has almost doubled in growth since the previous month (April) which recovered at 15% annually. This apart, with offices ramping up to return to work full time and the economy warily falling back to pre-Covid norms, sectors such as Office Equipment/Automation (up 101 percent), Real Estate (up 25 percent) have seen promising growth patterns. Retail (up 11 percent) continues to hire with moderate growth this month.

On the other hand, having observed a dip since Sept ’21, Media & Entertainment (down 19 percent) continues down a steep slope of decline indicating a long way towards post-pandemic recovery. Online recruitment activity contracted in Engineering, Cement, Construction, Iron/Steel (down 9 percent) although minor improvement was seen last month. Shipping/ Marine (down 4 percent) also noted a first annual dip from a year ago level.

Tier-2 markets mark long term recovery

City-specific data indicates that Coimbatore (up 27 percent) tops the chart once again surpassing growth numbers witnessed by top metro cities in India, tailed by Mumbai (up 26 percent). Delhi-NCR and Hyderabad marked a 16% annual growth in job opportunities, closely followed by metro cities Chennai (up 15 percent), Pune (up 13 percent), Ahmedabad (up 15 percent), Bangalore (up 9 percent) and Kolkata (up 6 percent). The BFSI industry particularly saw substantial hiring activity once again across key metro cities with the highest spike in Pune and Delhi-NCR.

Tier-2 job markets continue to fuel hopeful employment patterns this May 2022 across Baroda, Chandigarh, Jaipur and Kolkata which reflected growing annual demand in the range of 2 to 12 percent. Job creation in said locations continue to emerge consistently since the previous month indicating bullish prospects for employment generation.

Travel and Tourism roles surge as India returns to the old normal

Hiring demand for Travel and Tourism professionals observed a spike of 27% for the third consecutive month as a result of limited travel restrictions and improved economic recovery. Online job posting activity for Finance & Accounts (up 49 percent) and HR & Admin (up 36 percent) roles led the growth pie and are estimated to continue on this path in the coming months.

Online hiring for Customer Service (up 16 percent) roles witnessed double-digit rise annually for the first time since the onset of the pandemic. Moreover, Software, Hardware, Telecom (up 13 percent), Marketing & Communications (up 11 percent), Engineering/ Production (up 4 percent) Healthcare (up 3 percent) and Arts/Creative (up 5 percent) saw a positive demand trend when comparison to May 2020.

Among all occupation groups, Purchase/Logistics/Supply Chain observed a marginal dip of 2% on a year-on-year basis with mild fluctuations in hiring numbers over the past year.

Annual demand for freshers at par with top management at 19%

In the month of May 2022, online hiring activity for entry level job seekers (0-3 years) has come to par with the demand for top management (over 16 years) which witnessed maximum demand consecutively for several months. Both experience levels, along with Intermediate (4-6 years) roles noted a surge of 19% on an annual basis. The demand for fresh talent continues to reign high across industries and is only estimated to grow further.