COVID-19: 62 per cent decline in hiring activities

New Delhi, May 07: The nationwide lockdown due to the spread of COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in 62 per cent decline in hiring activities in April compared to the same month last year, according to a report.

Hiring activities dropped to 951 last month from 2,477 in April 2019, according to the Naukri JobSpeak Index.

The April 2020 decline in hiring is led by sectors like hotel/restaurant/travel/airlines (-91 per cent), auto/ancillary (-82 per cent), retail (-77 per cent) and accounting/finance (-70 per cent).

The Naukri JobSpeak is a monthly Index which calculates and records hiring activity based on job listings on Naukri.com website.

New jobs for professionals in the ticketing/travel/airlines, hotel/restaurants and HR/administration sectors witnessed a dip of 95 per cent, 89 per cent and 78 per cent, respectively.

Functional roles in purchase/supply chain (-70 per cent), marketing/advertising (-69 per cent), sales/business development (-69 per cent) and accounts/finance (-68 per cent) also witnessed a steep decline.

However, new jobs for professionals in the IT-software (-51 per cent), BPO/ITES/KPO (-54 per cent) pharma/biotech/healthcare (-57 per cent) and teaching/education (-56 per cent) sectors were less impacted as compared to other sectors in April 2020.

The job market across cities registered a double-digit dip in hiring mainly led by metros where Delhi dipped by 70 per cent followed by Chennai (-62 per cent), Kolkata (-60 per cent) and Mumbai (-60 per cent).

There was an across-the-board decline in hiring at varied experience levels with the entry-level experience bands (0 to 3 years) witnessing the sharpest decline of 67 per cent.