The current impact on the job market is, however, less severe than what was witnessed in April 2020; hospitality and travel worst hit
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The Second Wave of COVID-19 and allied lockdown-like restrictions have impacted employment across the country. According to the Naukri JobSpeak Index, there was a 15 percent dip in hiring activity sequentially for April 2021.
The report, however, said that the current impact on the job market is less severe than what was seen in April 2020.
Among sectors, the report said that retail saw a sequential decline of 33 percent in April 2021 due to restricted operating hours or closure owing to lockdowns in many parts of the country.
Sectors such as hospitality and travel (-36 percent), banking/finance (-26 percent) and teaching/education (-24 percent) remained highly impacted in hiring activity in April 2021.
Said Pawan Goyal, Chief Business Officer, Naukri: “The disruption caused by the Second Wave of COVID-19 has impacted hiring activity. However, the current impact on the job market is less severe than what we saw in April 2020 where the Naukri JobSpeak index declined by 51 percent sequentially.”
Sectors like pharmaceuticals/biotech (decline of 9 percent) and medical/healthcare (decline of 10 percent) were less impacted by the restrictions imposed.
City-wise decline
The jobs market across metro and non-metro cities saw a downfall, barring Kolkata that remained flat.
The aggressive surge of cases in Maharashtra directly impacted hiring trends in Mumbai, which saw a sequential decline of 20 percent in April 2021.
While Delhi/National Capital Region (NCR) (-18 percent) also remained impacted sequentially, Bangalore (-10 percent), Chennai (-10 percent) and Hyderabad (-4 percent) were less impacted in April 2021.
The Naukri JobSpeak is a monthly Index that calculates and records hiring activity based on the job listings on Naukri.com website month-on-month (m-o-m).
The job speak index includes employment that might be for replacement hiring. July 2008 is taken as the base with an index value of 1,000 and the subsequent monthly index is compared with the data for July 2008.