Hiring rate around 42% above pre-Covid levels in India: Report

India's recruitment activity has been recovering steadily as the hiring rate in June 2021 was around 42 per cent above the pre-pandemic levels in 2019, says a report.

According to LinkedIn India – Labour Market Update for June 2021, there was a deepening hiring dip in April 2021, corresponding to a second wave of Covid-19 cases in India. Since then, it has been recovering steadily, compared to the pre-Covid levels in 2019.

Hiring rate was 35 per cent higher at the end of May 2021, and 42 per cent higher at the end of June 2021.

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Hiring rate is a measure of hires divided by LinkedIn membership. This analysis looks at the changes in hiring rate between this month and the same month in 2019.

The uptick is possibly due to a release of pent up hiring, as companies took a more cautious stance towards hiring in 2020, the report said.

The report further noted that competition for jobs was lower compared to 12 months ago, but applicants are applying more aggressively.

"Last year, we saw the applications per job double in the middle of 2020, during the height of global lockdowns. Right now, it is going in the opposite direction - average applications per job is 0.6x compared to the same month last year. Meanwhile, the applications per applicant has been slowly increasing and has reached 1.2x compared to last year," it said.

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Taken together, this suggests that the supply of jobs has increased in the market, and also that workers are more actively seeking jobs. "In this environment, professionals who upskill will likely to have a wider spectrum of jobs available to them," it said.

Moreover, relative to their peers, young workers with hardware and software skills are more in-demand.

"Our data shows that between January 2018 to June 2021, the share of Gen Zs entering the workforce has increased by over 4.2 times.

"And when we take a closer look at the different levels of digital skills, we find that relative to others in their age group who only have basic or applied digital skills, Gen Z who have either software/hardware skills or disruptive digital skills are between 1.3 to 1.5 times more likely to be hired," the report noted.

‘Generation Z is the youngest cohort in the workforce – 18 to 24-year-olds.