Hiring in India Picks Up 35 percent from April to June: LinkedIn

LinkedIn, the world’s largest online professional network, today announced findings of the ‘Labour Market Update’, a monthly update on hiring trends and insights based on LinkedIn's Economic Graph, a digital representation of the Indian economy.

While the world continues to navigate different stages of the coronavirus, LinkedIn’s Economic Graph team has been closely monitoring the pandemic's disruptive impact across the global labour market. These findings are crystallized into the LinkedIn ‘Labour Market Update’, which highlights the hiring rate in India, overall hiring sentiment across industries, competition for securing jobs, and the top jobs and skills in demand. Findings show that there has been a significant hiring rebound as the country started 'unlocking' and more people returned to work. However, the pace of these gains are expected to slow down given the continued economic uncertainty.

1.    Between early-April to end-June, hiring increased by 35 percentage points: In India, hiring declines reached a low of below -50% year-on-year in April, before starting to slowly recover.  The hiring sentiment stands at -15% year-on-year as of the end of June. As risks of second-wave of infections emerge, some states have imposed lockdown measures again. Given this uncertainty, the recovery is expected to remain fairly flat in the coming weeks. 

*The analysis looks at the year-on-year changes in hiring rate, which is a measure of hires divided by LinkedIn membership. The analysis was conducted for the period of 11th Feb to 30th June 2020. 

Data also suggests that the gap between hires for males and females has narrowed from about 40 percentage points in February to around 30 percentage points in June.

This trend is observed across all sectors except for Manufacturing, Finance and Software & IT.

2.  Competition for jobs is heating up: Competition for jobs has doubled compared to 6 months ago, with the average number of applications per job posted on LinkedIn increasing from around 90 in Jan 2020, to 180 in June 2020.

3.  Recreation & Travel and Retail professionals are more likely to look for jobs in a different sector, compared to pre-COVID period: Compared to the pre-COVID period, data suggests that job seekers who are currently in the affected sectors (such as Recreation & Travel) are 6.8 times* more likely to look for jobs in a different sector, compared to pre-COVID times. Data further suggests that those in the retail sector are 2.4 times* likely to apply for a job in a different sector. The analysis looks at how job seekers in different industries are adapting to changes and adjusting their jobs search strategy. 

*The measure here calculates the likelihood that a member in a certain sector has applied for a job in a sector different to their own in June 2020 (post-COVID) compared to June 2019 (pre-COVID). A score of 2 here would suggest that a member in Industry A is twice as likely to apply to a job in an industry outside of Industry A. 

4.  The demand for disruptive skills tops the charts in June 2020: The Labour Market Update also highlights roles that are in demand today and are expected to remain relevant in the near future. These roles have the greatest number of job openings on LinkedIn, have seen steady growth over the past four years, pay a liveable wage, and require skills that can be learned online.

These are the top 5 in-demand jobs and skills:

1.    Jobs: 

·         Software Engineer

·         Business Development Manager 

·         Sales Manager 

·         Business Analyst

·         Content Writer

2.     Skills:

·         JavaScript

·         SQL 

·         Sales Management 

·         Team Leadership 

·         Recruiting