In its article published recently Al Jazeera said Indian youths are struggling to find jobs in the post Covid situation

Claim:

In its article ‘Long after COVID lockdowns, India’s youth struggle to find work’, Al Jazeera on February 3 said India’s unemployment rate in December stood at 7.91 percent, compared with 6.3 percent in 2018-19 and 4.7 percent in 2017-18. India’s youth – who make up more than one-fifth of the country’s 1.4 billion people – have borne the brunt of the job losses.

The Indian job market is getting back on track, though it was affected by the pandemic a great deal. Around 60% of those who reported losing a job in the past year have found their way back into the workforce, shows data from the latest YouGov-Mint-CPR Millennial Survey. More importantly, urban Indians are getting hopeful about job-hunting now, and are also taking better control of their careers, the survey suggests.

During first and second lockdowns, many youths who were at the first jobs of their careers lost their jobs. And they remained unemployed for a good amount of time at the beginning of their career. This will have an effect on their career for a long time.

Remote hiring is the new norm in the recruiting process and many youths have found jobs under this norm. HR experts are getting comfortable and familiar with the online interviews as campus hiring has taken a remote approach. The adaptability of job seekers is the most important thing. Remote hiring, Online Assessments, and Zoom meetings are a need of time, and everyone has to adapt to these trends. The IT sector – which caters to a huge young population -- is the least impacted industry in this pandemic. The IT sector was the top recruiter, hiring thousands of youth in 2021. The BPO sector also hired several people in 2021.

As per a recent report, 68 per cent of employers filled more than 60 per cent of their hiring needs in Q4 FY21. Witnessing the current hiring trends, experts are highly optimistic about the employment curve touching greater heights in the coming few months.

Job posting activity across various sectors in the last quarter has increased by 4%, even as March 2021 witnessed a drop of 2% as compared to February this year, the Monster Employment Index, conducted by Monster.com has found. However, certain industries witnessed significant growth in the month as compared to February.

These include courier/freight/transportation which grew 19% month-on-month, printing and packaging, which showed an increase of 5%, and office equipment/automation, which also increased by 5%.

Moreover, in terms of year-on-year growth as compared to March 2020, agro-based industries grew 12%, while logistics/courier grew 9%. Telecom/ISP marked an year-on-year increase of 8%, while IT hardware and software increased by 5%.

Aljazeera said jobs in manufacturing, tourism, and hospitality, considered quality jobs, are reduced and jobs in construction, agriculture, and retail, which are not good quality, have gone up. Thus, underemployment is a bigger problem than unemployment.

A latest comprehensive survey of the India employment scene has been released by TeamLease, one of the country's leading HR companies.

The survey underlines how the pressing need to innovate led to the creation of a number of 'hot' employment opportunities. Of the 17 sectors surveyed, five created new hot jobs and seven witnessed a flurry of new upcoming ones, it says.

The ‘hottest hot jobs’ category includes Artificial Intelligence Specialist – (BPO and IT Enabled Services), Augmented Reality Expert - (Ecommerce and Tech Start-ups), Genomic Portfolio Director - (Healthcare and Allied Industries), Master Edge Computing.

Among the job profiles that got a pandemic boost, the fastest growing ones are: Network Engineer (Information Technology and Knowledge Services-salary growth 10.89%), Asset Sales Executive (Banking, Financial Services and Insurance - 8.20%), Sourcing Manager (BPO and IT enabled Services - 7.36%), Sales Officer (Telecommunications - 6.00%), and Business Operations Analyst (Automobile & Allied - 4.67%).

The sector that saw salary growth of more than 10% is: Banking, Financial Services and Insurance, Healthcare and Allied Industries & Information Technology and Knowledge Services