After a brief spurt a few months after the pandemic in September-October 2020, the second COVID wave has led to a temporary freeze on hiring. According to Naukri.com, Covid 2.0 has led to a 15 percent sequential decline in April 2021, but the current impact on the job market is less severe than in April 2020 where the Naukri JobSpeak index declined by 51 percent month-on-month, said Pawan Goyal, Chief Business Officer.
A year-ago when the pandemic struck, hiring was the last priority as Corporate India was trying to get familiar with the new reality. Yet, there were some sectors that did well during the pandemic and after like agriculture, retail and logistics.
There is no need for despair though. There will be more job creations in various fields. “On a projected based of 4.6 million workforce, a 22-23 percent attrition projection would mean a million job movements are definitely on the cards”, said Kamal Karanth, CEO, Xpheno, a specialist staffing firm.
Jobs are in demand in 2021
Retail: The sector was strongly hit by lockdown restrictions, but has been bouncing back with an uptick in hiring of 15 percent.
Cloud-based Technologies: With work from home being a long-term solution, the jobs in demand will be in Cloud-based technologies. Kapil Sharma, Chief Sales Officer, Collabera Technologies, said AI, ML, API, DevOps, augmented and virtual reality, IoTs, 5G and cloud computing will be the jobs to look forward to.
Analytics: It is descriptive today–which means if someone has done X amount of manufacturing, it can be explained. Predictive analysis is based on this description. And then if augmentation is done–skills, automations, etc, it becomes prescriptive and this kind of job will be in demand. Subramanyam S, founder, president and CEO of AscentHR said, “More empowered in analytics means lesser employees will be needed in process industry. Automation will improve jobs but along with analytics it will be expensive and depends on budgets available.”
E-commerce and logistics: The opportunities will continue to boom as COVID third wave is anticipated. As per an ET Now report, demand for delivery and supply chain personnel is likely to double to 2,00,000-3,00,000 per month over the next few months.
Healthcare and Pharma: There will be a need for temporary jobs to manage the pandemic rush, said Kamal Karanth of Xpheno. However, pharma will thrive as people will depend on medicines and pharma companies to manage their new sedentary lifestyle due to COVID.
Life Sciences: Dependency on immunology, virology, genetic analysis will grow heavily.
Edutech: Online education has seen disproportionate growth which has not yet been measured, said Shivakumar N, Co-Founder and MD, ResourceTree, a business consulting firm.
Agriculture: Innovations and how to get new variant for mass production will be the key.
Challenges ahead
Skill will be the key for getting jobs and this is getting evolved as the job functions are getting specialised. “Even roles that used to require office presence are being transformed into remote roles with the invasion of technology in every vertical, said Prabhdeep Singh Founder and CEO, StanPlus, a provider of 24/7 emergency and medical transportation support ambulance network.
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