Hiring trends to look up in second quarter

Hiring trends are likely to see an upswing in the second quarter of the current year, the latest Manpower Employment Outlook survey has said, with India lagging behind only Japan in terms of the number of people that are expected to get employed.

While the employment outlook for Japan is 43 per cent, it is 40 per cent for India and 26 per cent for New Zealand. The outlook for the US economy is estimated at 24 per cent and for the UK economy the outlook is a mere 13 per cent for the second quarter of 2006.

The outlook for the first quarter of the year was only 27 per cent in India.

"This could be a cyclical pattern with higher employment projections for the second quarter than for the first quarter. The pattern is also typical of multinational companies which follow a calendar year and have low projections for the first quarter of the year," said Soumen Basu, executive chairman, Manpower India.

The survey, which interviewed 4,515 employers in India and was conducted for the fourth time, shows that transport and utilities would be the two drivers of growth in employment opportunities.

While the transport and utilities sector had a positive net employment outlook of 46 per cent, the services sector had a net outlook of 42 per cent on the back of high growth in the IT and ITES sector.

Both mining and construction and the manufacturing sectors are expected to have a net employment outlook of 40 per cent and wholesale trade and retail trade is estimated to have an outlook of 33 per cent.

"The emphasis on the infrastructure sector including ports and airlines is giving rise to the high employment projections for the transport and utilities sector and the mining and construction sector," added Basu.

Among the four regions, the maximum hike in salaries is expected in the southern region, with the outlook at 46 per cent. According to the survey, the northern and eastern regions are expected to have an outlook of 37 per cent.