The employment outlook for Bangalore for the October-December quarter has seen a downward movement. It has dipped by 9 points and stands at 79 points. This was in contrast to the employment outlook for the July-September quarter when everything seemed to be looking up. The economic woes dogging the western economies seems to have had their impact on many of the firms.
According to the latest TeamLease Employment Outlook Report (EOR), the October-December 2011 quarter has shown a dip in hiring across most major cities in India. The three point dip in the index which now stands at 71 per cent from the earlier 74 per cent is due to a substantially higher percentage of respondents indicating they would have no change in hiring this coming quarter. Almost proportionately, there was a fall in the numbers that indicated they would increase hiring and the index fell a couple of percentage points above the year’s low.
The stable atmosphere of employment and business sentiment built over the past three quarters has been belied by sentiments expressed by respondents for the present quarter. There was an across-the-board drop in indices — the Employment and Business Outlook indices (3 percentage points each), as well as across most cities and sectors. And the drops are significant enough (up to 9 points) to signal extreme caution in job markets over the immediate next quarter.
Sangeeta Lala, Sr V-P, TeamLease Services, said, “Though the employment index has witnessed a dip, we are hopeful that this dip is only temporary. All sectors are growing, though at a slower rate, and hence employees want to hold on to their jobs preferring stability.”
The discreet signs that a few sectors like the IT and ITeS exhibited last quarter have proved to be contagious this coming quarter. IT has pressed the panic button with a 7-point drop in the employment sentiment and an 8-point drop in business sentiment.
The brunt of a sentiment swing, possibly due to concerns about the global economy, is borne by two of the most premium of all functional areas: IT (6 points down) and engineering (4 points down.
