Job postings rise in February, says report

Job postings went up in February, mainly led by hiring activities in FMCG, food and packaged goods sectors, according to a report.

Job postings went up in February, mainly led by hiring activities in FMCG, food and packaged goods sectors, according to a report.

Monster.com's Monster Employment Index showed that job postings witnessed a six per cent sequential growth in February. (AFP File)

Monster.com's Monster Employment Index showed that job postings witnessed a six per cent sequential growth in February.

The report revealed that most of the industries have shown growth with import/export (10%), FMCG, food and packaged goods (9%), and printing and packaging (9%), BPO/ITES (7 %), banking/financial services and insurance (7%) and garments/ textiles/ leather /gems and jewellery (7%), witnessing significant increase in job postings in February as compared to January this year.

Whereas, engineering, cement, construction, iron/ steel declined by 3%, home appliances 5%, and retail 6%.

In terms of year-on-year (y-o-y) growth, the overall index in February still showcases a significant drop of 15% mainly on account of the impact of the pandemic across some of the key sectors.

Industries like travel and tourism witnessed a decline of 62% in February as compared with the year-ago period, education by 42%, oil/gas/petroleum, power 37%, and BPO/ITES 36% dragged the index down as they are still significantly down from pre-COVID levels.

However, agro-based industries witnessed an 11% rise in hiring activities and telecom/ISP 10% in terms of y-o-y comparison.

“While shifts in the job market have their ups and downs, with some sectors faring better than others, segments such as IT and telecom, alongside agro-based industries and media and entertainment continue to do well. Travel and tourism still face their set of challenges.

However, it has seen improvement from where it was during the onset of the pandemic. With the COVID vaccine rollout being initiated and the nation gears up to be workplace-ready, we can hope for improvements and new opportunities to open up in the coming months,” Monster.com CEO Sekhar Garisa said.

The Monster Employment Index is a broad and comprehensive monthly analysis of online job posting activity conducted by Monster India platform.

The report also revealed that there has been a growth in jobs in all the major cities across the country in February as compared to January this year.

Among the cities Ahmedabad (17 per cent), Bengaluru (10 per cent), Hyderabad (9 per cent) have shown the maximum growth while Delhi/NCR (6 per cent), Jaipur (5 per cent), Coimbatore (4 per cent), Chandigarh (4 per cent) have shown moderate growth.

On the basis of y-o-y comparison, the majority of the cities are still seeing a decline in job postings.

All functions and departments have shown positive growth in February compared to the previous month, while software, hardware, telecom (7%), HR and admin (7%), finance and accounts (7%) have shown the maximum growth, hospitality and travel (2%), purchase/logistics/supply chain (2%) and legal (1%) have shown moderate growth.