Indian economy continues to recover from a low hit in the third quarter of 2013, according to the latest Monster Employment Index that shows hiring activity.
The index rose for the fifth straight month in February to 152, indicating that recruitment activity was 14% higher in February 2014 compared to February 2013. In comparison to January, hiring was higher by 7%.
The biggest driver of hiring was the IT sector, and Bangalore emerged as the city with the strongest improvement in hiring trends. Pharma and production were also strong, while auto and gems and jewellery saw a decline.
“While 2013 saw subdued hiring on the whole, 2014 appears to be more promising. IT, Banking, Health Care have been some of the most steadily growing sectors,” said Sanjay Modi, Managing Director, Monster.com, IMESEA.
“More recently we have been observing improvement in the Production and Manufacturing sector as well. As per recent surveys, Indian employers are expected to hire aggressively in the second quarter while the projected average salary hike in the year 2014 is of 10 percent.”
IT – Hardware, Software (up 33 percent) led all industry sectors charting strong annual growth trend even this month while recruitment activity in BPO/ITES (down four percent) sector eased from the year-ago following positive growth in Jan’14
Among others, Travel and Tourism (up 32 percent); Education (up 18 percent); and Healthcare, Bio Technology & Life Sciences, Pharmaceuticals (up 30 percent) sector witnessed notable improvement in long-term growth momentum; up by 29 percentage points, 11 percentage points and 14 percentage points, respectively, between Jan’14 and Feb’14
Production and Manufacturing (up 32 percent) saw significant double digit growth in opportunities over Feb’13. The pace of annual growth improved 30 percentage points from Jan’14.
Automotive/ Ancillaries / Tyres (down 13 percent) registered the most notable year-on-year as well as month-on-month decline.
Among occupation groups, Senior Management (up 50 percent) professionals saw the most notable growth in demand between Feb’13 and Feb’14. Purchase/ Logistics/ Supply Chain (up 10 percent) personnel registered a positive year-on-year growth in demand for the first time since Feb’13. Online demand for Engineering /Production (down two percent) professionals eased from the year-ago following a month of positive growth. Arts/Creative (down 34 percent) professional recorded most significant annual decline among occupation groups even this month. This is the tenth successive annual decline of the series.
Online opportunities exceeded the year-ago level in 11 of the 13 cities monitored by the Index. Bangalore (up 36 percent) led all monitored cities by the way of long-term growth even in February. Mumbai (up 20 percent); Delhi-NCR (up 13 percent); Hyderabad (up 18 percent) and Chennai (up eight percent) also registered an uptrend in year-on-year recruitment activity. Baroda (down seven percent) and Coimbatore (down one percent) are the only cities to record a negative annual growth even this month. The rate of long-term growth, nevertheless, improved for both cities.