Despite the ongoing global turmoil, hiring intent in India has steadily increased over the past year, according to "Employment Outlook Report'' for the Services and Manufacturing sectors for the first quarter of the financial year 2023-24.

The findings of the report indicate that hiring intentions in the April-June quarter of FY23-24 are 10% higher as compared to the same period last year. Close to 64% of employers compared to 54% in Q1 2022 are keen to increase their resource pool across industries.  However, compared to Q4 FY22-23, the hiring outlook has witnessed a 4% dip.

The report released by TeamLease Services surveyed 809 small, medium and large companies across 14 industries in India and covered non-white collar profiles.

According to the report, Q1 is projecting a strong outlook, especially for entry and junior-level employees, in both service (73% and 71%, respectively) and Manufacturing (49% and 55%, respectively) sectors.

The outlook for mid-level (54%) in Services and (32%) in Manufacturing is also balanced. From a business size perspective, large-sized organisations in the services (86%) and manufacturing (73%) sectors have weathered the recession well and have higher levels of hiring intent than in the previous quarter. Across the two quarters and sizes of companies, the services sector has higher levels of hiring intent than the manufacturing sector.

For candidates, who are looking to secure job opportunities in the services sectors, some of the key industries leading the hiring spree are Telecommunications (96%), Financial Services (93%), Ecommerce & Allied Start-ups (89%), Retail (87%) and Education Services (83%).  Whereas, for those who are looking to build a promising future in the manufacturing sector, some of the prominent industries are healthcare & pharmaceuticals (91%), FMCG (89%) as well as EV & infrastructure (73%).

From a sectoral perspective, in Metro & Tier-1 cities, the hiring intent for services is at (91%) and for the manufacturing sector, the rate is (85%). Tier-1 cities like Delhi (95%) and Mumbai (92%) in services and Mumbai (98%) and Chennai (91%) in manufacturing are thriving mainly across financial services, telecommunications, information technology and manufacturing, engineering & infrastructure, FMCG, healthcare & pharmaceutical respectively. However, rural hiring intentions are the lowest across all geographies and sectors. The services sector, on the other hand, showed a marginal growth of 26%.

As the world is on a massive digitisation spree, the demand for skilled workers has increased to 3% and 2% in Q1 Apr-Jun FY 2023-24 for services and manufacturing, respectively. In contrast, in Q1 April-June FY 2023-24, the intent to hire for Blue-Collar job roles decreased by 6% for services and 8% for manufacturing, while the Engineering function increased slightly. Companies are also focusing more on digital marketing strategies in order to adapt to changing consumer behaviour.

Looking at the attrition trend, the services industry is seeing a low talent retention rate, especially in Growth Businesses (11%) and Mature Businesses (15%) whereas the manufacturing industry is observing a positive increment across segments like textile (2.23%), power and energy (6.47%), and manufacturing, engineering & infrastructure (8.14%), the same industries had observed the attrition  of 1.22%, 5.63%, and 7.51 respectively in October-December  2022.

“Industries around the world, including those in India, have been severely affected by the current global unrest, which has resulted in large-scale layoffs, a hiring freeze, and an imminent economic downturn. Despite this, hiring prospects in India have continued to improve over the past year, with 64% of employers in the service and manufacturing industries expressing a positive outlook on hiring. The main reason for this is the changing global investment dynamics and the precautionary measures that businesses are taking,” said Kartik Narayan, CEO, TeamLease Services.

“Looking at the current 5G rollout, adoption and increasing number of use cases, the telecommunications sector in India is seeing an increase in infrastructure investment to meet the growing needs of both local and global clients. As a result, telecom companies plan to invest INR 2,000 crore in the construction of large hyper-scale data centres, resulting in steady growth and job creation for blue-collar, gig, and grey-collar workers. Additionally, the information technology industry is also looking to establish data centres. While there is demand for traditional non-white-collar jobs in the sector, workforce rationalisation around the world and in India has impacted hiring intentions,” said Mayur Taday, Chief Business Officer, TeamLease Services.