Job postings rise in February led by hiring in FMCG sector, says report

Job postings went up in February, mainly led by hiring activities in FMCG, food and packaged goods sectors, according to a report.

Monster.com's Monster Employment Index showed that job postings witnessed a six per cent sequential growth in February.

The report revealed that most of the industries have shown growth with import/export (10 per cent), FMCG, food and packaged goods (9 per cent), and printing and packaging (9 per cent), BPO/ITES (7 per cent), banking/financial services and insurance (7 per cent) and garments/ textiles/ leather /gems and jewellery (7 per cent), witnessing significant increase in job postings in February as compared to January this year.

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Whereas, engineering, cement, construction, iron/ steel declined by 3 per cent, home appliances 5 per cent, and retail 6 per cent.

In terms of year-on-year (y-o-y) growth, the overall index in February still showcases a significant drop of 15 per cent mainly on account of the impact of the pandemic across some of the key sectors.

Industries like travel and tourism witnessed a decline of 62 per cent in February as compared with the year-ago period, education by 42 per cent, oil/gas/petroleum, power 37 per cent, and BPO/ITES 36 per cent dragged the index down as they are still significantly down from pre-Covid levels.

However, agro-based industries witnessed an 11 per cent rise in hiring activities and telecom/ISP 10 per cent in terms of y-o-y comparison.

“While shifts in the job market have their ups and downs, with some sectors faring better than others, segments such as IT and telecom, alongside agro-based industries and media and entertainment continue to do well. Travel and tourism still face their set of challenges.

However, it has seen improvement from where it was during the onset of the pandemic. With the Covid vaccine rollout being initiated and the nation gears up to be workplace-ready, we can hope for improvements and new opportunities to open up in the coming months,” Monster.com CEO Sekhar Garisa said.

The Monster Employment Index is a broad and comprehensive monthly analysis of online job posting activity conducted by Monster India platform.

The report also revealed that there has been a growth in jobs in all the major cities across the country in February as compared to January this year.

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Among the cities Ahmedabad (17 per cent), Bengaluru (10 per cent), Hyderabad (9 per cent) have shown the maximum growth while Delhi/NCR (6 per cent), Jaipur (5 per cent), Coimbatore (4 per cent), Chandigarh (4 per cent) have shown moderate growth.

On the basis of y-o-y comparison, the majority of the cities are still seeing a decline in job postings.

All functions and departments have shown positive growth in February compared to the previous month, while software, hardware, telecom (7 per cent), HR and admin (7 per cent), finance and accounts (7 per cent) have shown the maximum growth, hospitality and travel (2 per cent), purchase/logistics/supply chain (2 per cent) and legal (1 per cent) have shown moderate growth.