India Inc hiring may gather pace in October-December, but not as much as last year

KOLKATA: The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic continues to be felt on corporate India’s hiring plans but there’s been a small pick-up in sentiment from the July-September quarter, the latest Manpower Employment Survey has revealed. However, hiring sentiment in four of seven Indian industry sectors is the weakest reported since the survey began 15 years ago. These are the manufacturing, mining and construction, services, and wholesale and retail trade sectors. The outlook is better for the remaining three — public administration and education; finance, insurance and real estate; and transportation and utilities.About 7% of Indian firms among the 813 surveyed are looking to hire more people in the October-December quarter, compared with 5% in July-September period. Hiring intentions, however, are still down significantly from 20% in the October-December period last year.About 3% of companies said they plan to cut headcount, 54% expected no change to their payrolls while 36% said they were unsure about plans for October-December. This puts the net employment outlook — the difference between firms looking to hire and those expecting a fall in headcount — at +4%. Adjusting for seasonal variations, the net outlook is +3%. 77989552To gauge the pandemic’s impact, the survey asked 524 of the respondents when they expected hiring intentions to return to pre-Covid levels. About 17% said they expect it to happen by October 2020 while 27% said they would be ready to hire in four to nine months, whereas 42% were unsure about returning to normalcy from the hiring perspective.Mining & Construction Forecast DimThe strongest labour market is forecast in the public administration and education sector, with a net employment outlook of +9%, followed by +7% in the finance, insurance and real estate sector and the transportation and utilities sector. Employers report a cautious outlook of +2% in the services sector and the wholesale and retail trade sector, while the outlook for the manufacturing sector stands at +1%.The weakest labour market is anticipated in mining and construction, which is seen as being flat.“Post the ‘right-sizing’ exercise aligning themselves to the current market demands, organisations are now looking at improving productivity, new forms of employee engagement, getting furloughed employees back and implementation of technology influencing employment trends this quarter. Corporates are playing the ‘standby’ game hoping for the festive season to bring them good news,” said Sandeep Gulati, group managing director of Manpower Group India. “The government is also trying to ease the burden on corporate India by providing various sops from production-linked incentives to changes in the labour law and leniency on tax returns. We hope to see the impact of these reforms in the subsequent quarters.”Smaller organisations are expected to lead hiring, said the survey, followed by medium and large ones. From a regional perspective, the north and east indicate a more positive outlook compared with the west and south.

from Economic Times https://bit.ly/2EZft24
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