Indian jobs market showed a good revival trend with an overall growth of 18.4 percent in March 2022 against the same period of last year. While sectors like travel and hospitality, and energy zoomed; healthcare and e-commerce saw some contraction in headcount.
The travel and hospitality sector, which was the worst affected due to the pandemic-led lockdowns and restrictions in the past two years, has put up a robust recovery with a 47.6 percent growth in payroll headcount during the month, according to Allsec Technologies, a Quess Corp subsidiary.
Considering the pandemic strain on this industry, it is encouraging to see this growth in contrast to the 48.7 percent decline last year (March 2021 versus March 2020), Quess Corp said.
But travel and hospitality sector is still off the grid from the pre-pandemic time.
“A comparison with pre-pandemic numbers indicate that the industry is not quite back to pre-pandemic levels, having witnessed a 24.3 percent de-growth (March 2022 vs March 2020) but is certainly on the way to recovery,” as per the analysis done by Quess Corp, a listed staffing and human resource firm.
Other sectors:
Besides the growth in travel and hospitality in March 2022, sectors like energy, IT/ITeS and logistics lead the growth pack, as per Allsec data. Construction, consumer goods and manufacturing posted marginal recovery in March 2022, said Allsec, which tracks the employment trends in various sectors.
The energy sector followed close with a 41.5 percent yearly increase in headcount, and has notably surpassed pre-pandemic levels with a 42 percent growth.
The IT/ITes industry has performed considerably well with a 27 percent uptick accompanied by logistics which saw a 27.3 percent growth.
Industries such as financials (16.6 percent) and food and beverage (12.9 percent) also showed an optimistic year-on-year trend in March.
Contraction in parts:
While several sectors have recovered from the pandemic, healthcare saw a contraction in headcount by minus 8.3 percent.
Similarly, e-commerce saw a marginal dip of minus 1.5 percent in March over the same period a year back. Wholesale and retail trade saw a contraction of -2.1 percent too.
Economic recovery:
The growth in jobs market is understandable from the fact that Indian economy is gradually recovering from the pandemic shock, and economic activities have picked up pace. The gross collections of Goods and Services Tax (GST) rose to Rs 1.42 lakh crore in March, for sales in February, a record high, since the GST was rolled out in July 2017, according to the Union finance ministry data released last week.
The fresh GST collection is 14.7 percent more than March 2021 collections, and a 45.6 percent spike from March 2020.
“We have seen an optimistic recovery pattern across industries this month. It is heartening to see travel and hospitality lead the way, along with several other industries, which were severely impacted by the pandemic,” said Ashish Johri, chief executive of Allsec, and added that policy measures and economic revival is aiding the job market.
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