'Interest for veterinary jobs, postings for food and retail sectors spike'

Overall hiring has touched pre-pandemic level

Let alone IT, recent hiring trends post Covid-19 pandemic have seen a huge spike in clicks for jobs in veterinary, personal care, childcare, dental and food & retail, shows latest data by leading job site Indeed.

Data from Indeed suggested that for the first time in months, hiring activity in India is at a pre pandemic baseline, compared with February 2020 levels.

Interestingly, the number of clicks for veterinary jobs saw a massive 216 per cent increase during the same period, followed by jobs in personal care (155 per cent), childcare (115 per cent) and dental (108 per cent). Clicks for sanitation jobs, too, grew by 54 per cent, consistent with an increase in job postings by employers for such roles.

The easing of lockdown restrictions and the consequent reopening of spaces sharpened the focus on hygiene and sanitization – as reflected in Indeed’s data, which showed that the demand for housekeepers, caretakers, housekeeping managers, custodians, executive housekeepers, and cleaners had grown by 60 per cent between July 2020 and July 2021.

The number of job roles in food and retail sectors, too, witnessed an increase (52 per cent and 39 per cent, respectively) in the same period, while the demand for roles in HR and finance grew by 27 per cent each.

Job postings for IT tech software roles saw a 19 per cent increase between July 2020 and July 2021 as an expected outcome of the pandemic-induced digitization.  Job posting for other IT job roles such as project head, engineer, also saw an increase of 8-16 per cent.

With the pandemic confining people to their homes for extended periods of time, physical and mental well-being have gained greater relevance than ever before. This reflected in an 89 per cent increase in clicks for applying for therapy jobs on Indeed between July 2020 and July 2021.

There was a decline in job seekers’ interest for roles in industries or functions like aviation (-25 per cent), media (-19 per cent), accounting (-8 per cent), customer relations (-7 per cent), and admin (-6 per cent), as was evident from the difference in the number of clicks on Indeed between July 2020 and July 2021.

According to Sashi Kumar, Head of Sales, Indeed India, the reopening of the economy and the efforts by businesses to work around the challenges presented by Covid-19 have pushed the Indian job market towards recovery. While the relevance of tech jobs continues to be high, the renewed demand for retail and food jobs indicates that the consumption economy will play an important role in driving job growth further.

"Meanwhile, hygiene clearly has become a top priority for both employers and job seekers. What’s curious is the heightened interest for veterinary, therapy, personal care, and childcare jobs – a trend that seemingly indicates a significant shift in the priorities of job seekers. Recovery at this pace or even faster would be excellent," Kumar added.