Hiring demand up 9% YoY in Oct, dips sequentially: Monster Employment Index

Hiring demand for the month of October 2021, witnessed a dip of 3 per cent, as compared to September 2021. However, job demand grew 9 per cent sequentially in the past six months showing an optimistic outlook to recovery, said the Monster Employment Index. There has also been a strong year-on-year recovery with a 9 per cent uptick in October 2021 (Oct 2021 vs Oct 2020).

October 2021 saw industries such as Office Equipment/Automation (up 30 per cent) show remarkable improvement on account of back-to-office trends. Travel and Tourism (7 per cent) also witnessed considerable monthly growth with a major uptick in cities such as Chandigarh, Jaipur, and Kochi.

Hiring of professionals in hospitality and travel roles saw the highest month-on-month growth, indicating an overall promising recovery for the Travel sector in the months to come (Oct 2021 vs Sept 2021). There has also been an improvement in industries such as Education and Retail, as compared to the previous months.

As compared to October 2020, the Banking, Financial Services, Insurance (46 per cent) and IT-hardware, software (37 per cent) industries led in e-recruitment activity, marking the highest growth in metro cities which continue to dominate year-on-year hiring trends. The demand for entry-level professionals notably witnessed a yearly incline of 3 per cent (Oct 2021 vs Oct 2020).

Sekhar Garisa, CEO, Monster.com, a Quess company, said, “In the month of October, we saw a decline in hiring activities by 3 per cent. This is a yearly trend we observe following festive hiring hikes. It is encouraging to see the travel and tourism industry dust off from the pandemic impact and truly pave its way to revival. We also see promising back-to-office trends with increasing automation and a huge spike in demand for office supplies. Moreover, the recruitment space is looking up for entry-level talent as more and more organisations are looking to hire freshers. At Monster.com, we have seen a huge improvement in the intent to hire by top companies via our virtual career fair for freshers–Aspire.”

Year-on-year, BFSI (46 per cent) led e-recruitment activity, followed by Telecom/ISP (38 per cent) and IT-Hardware, Software (37 per cent), Printing/Packaging (31 per cent), and Office Equipment/Automation (27 per cent) in October 2021 (Oct 2021 vs Oct 2020).

On the other hand, Government/PSU/Defence (-13 per cent) industry posted the steepest annual dip in online job postings. Industries such as Engineering, Cement, Construction, Iron/ Steel (-11 per cent), Education (-10 per cent) and Travel and Tourism (-8 per cent), Retail (-3 per cent), and Media & Entertainment (-3 per cent) industries still remain impacted and recorded continuous annual decline.

City trend

In the month of October 2021, city trends indicate that Tier-2 cities such as Coimbatore (3 per cent) and Jaipur (1 per cent) witnessed highest monthly growth in job postings. Hyderabad, Kochi, Mumbai, and Delhi-NCR, which previously witnessed a dip in hiring activity, have stabilized in the month. However, despite festive hiring demand, cities such as Kolkata (-5 per cent), Bengaluru (-2 per cent), Pune (-2 per cent), Chandigarh (-1 per cent), Ahmedabad (-1 per cent), and Chennai (-1 per cent) witnessed a monthly decline in job posting activity (Oct 2021 vs Sept 2021).

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