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Women, Gen Z most vulnerable in job market post 2nd wave
The overall workforce confidence has slumped after showing promise in March and the individual confidence index scores of female professionals fell almost eight points in June, a 4x decline than male workers confidence index, the job networking platform said.
Gen Z, or employees who are below 25 years of age, and female workers have become the most vulnerable in the jobs market with the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic hitting the country, a fresh survey by LinkedIn said on Tuesday.
The overall workforce confidence has slumped after showing promise in March and the individual confidence index scores of female professionals fell almost eight points in June, a 4x decline than male workers confidence index, the job networking platform said.
Gen Z workers are more than twice as worried as their seniors as Covid-19 amplified the importance of work experience and professional connections, the survey said.
“India’s working women are approximately 2x more likely to be worried about the availability of jobs, their professional network and time devoted to job-seeking than working men today. This uneven impact has also bruised the financial stability of working women as about 1 in 4 (23%) female professionals are concerned about growing expenses or debt, in contrast with just about 1 in 10 (13%) working men,” it said.
“As India slowly begins to come out of the second wave of the pandemic, we see the year-on-year hiring rate recover from a low of 10% in April to 35% at the end of May. Despite this modest revival, confidence levels of working women and young professionals are among the lowest in the workforce today. Twice as many working women are concerned with job availability compared to working men,” said Ashutosh Gupta, India country manager, LinkedIn.
The survey showed that nearly 30% of Gen Z professionals and 26% of millennials are troubled by the lack of jobs.
“The uncertainty widens when it comes to finances as almost one in every four Gen Z (23%) and millennials (24%) report being more worried about their debt or expenses, compared to just half as many boomers (13%) in India,” said the survey. Boomers refer to those above 55 years of age.
The LinkedIn survey results are similar to the fresh official payroll data, especially related to the employment opportunities for 18-25 age group workers. The payroll data of the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation released on Sunday showed how fresh job additions in April were at a 10-month low. The fall in new payroll additions was primarily because of the fall in additions in the 18-25 age group. As many as 370,895 workers in the 18-25 age group had joined the formal workforce in April.
The average time for fresh graduates to find a new job has also increased by 43%, from 2 to 2.8 months, according to the LinkedIn survey. The conversion time has increased and remote opportunities too have gone up. The proportion of entry level jobs labelled as ‘remote’ have increased nine times between 2020 and 2021.
India was going through a tough employment environment even before the pandemic. The labour market has been stretched further, which has left millions jobless.
