India’s Job Market Is Looking Up, Report Says
India is hiring, a new jobs report shows.
Hiring activity increased 22% from a year earlier last month, the Naukri Job Speak Index showed, hinting that things may be looking up in Asia’s third-largest economy. From May, hiring activity was up 6.8%.
“The job market continues to sustain the momentum gained over the past few months and is moving further north,” V. Suresh, chief sales officer at Naukri.com, a job website owned by Internet company Info Edge (India) Ltd., said in a report.
The index is measured on the basis of job listings added to the site every month. The company says more than 48,000 clients are using the website.
India desperately needs to create jobs for the estimated one million people who reach working age each month. Creating such positions was one of the key promises that helped Prime Minister Narendra Modi win a landslide electoral victory two years ago.
Mr. Modi has often repeated his commitment, citing statistics that show 65% of India’s population is under 35 years.
But his government has been criticized by opposition parties for doing too little to create jobs as the economy continues to show signs of sluggishness, despite the launch of initiatives such as Make in India aimed at boosting growth and creating jobs.
The report shows the telecommunications sector led hiring activity, with a 44% year-over-year increase in June. Activity in outsourcing services rose 42% while software services increased 19%. The healthcare sector saw a 37% increase in new job activity while auto and auto ancillary recorded a 14% gain.
Meanwhile, hiring activity in the construction and engineering sector fell 15%.
That matches the current slowdown in India’s infrastructure development as companies struggle with high debt and find it hard to raise fresh loans to finance projects.
Hiring activity fell 9% in real estate, which too has been under regulatory scrutiny amid lack of transparency, delayed projects and high debt of developers.
New jobs in oil and gas dipped 3% while in the banking, financial services and insurance, or BFSI, and pharmaceuticals sectors they were stagnant.
