Hiring activity on a positive trajectory in Jan 2022 with 41% growth

The year 2022 is off to a flying start with a hiring spree across industries, according to the Naukri JobSpeak index, which recorded 41% year-on-year growth in January 2022. The country’s premier index was trending at 2716 in January 2022 versus 1925 in January last year. The upswing of hiring activity was observed in multiple sectors with IT-software, retail, and telecom leading the charts. 

With the beginning of 2022, the hiring sentiment reflected a resilience to the third wave as the corporate world geared up for growth. Outpacing 2021, hiring activity saw strong growth signs in major sectors. Apart from the key sectors, other sectors that observed an uptick in hiring trend compared with last year are pharma (29%), medical/healthcare (10%), oil and gas/power (8%), insurance (8%), FMCG (7%), and manufacturing (2%). Auto/auto ancillary remained flat in January this year versus last year. 

The upswing in hiring in IT-software and BFSI sectors have enabled metro cities to outperform their tier-2 counterparts in the year-on-year growth charts. IT hubs of India – Bengaluru (79%), Hyderabad (66%), and Pune (63%) recorded the highest growth in January this year. Other metro cities like Mumbai (58%), Chennai (54%), Kolkata (41%), and Delhi/NCR (35%) also witnessed a spike in the hiring trajectory. 

Among the non-metros, Ahmedabad (50%) witnessed highest growth in January this year followed by Coimbatore (43%), Kochi (27%), Vadodara (12%) and Jaipur (8%).

Also read: IT hiring still favours men over women

Hiring across all experience bands was positive in January 2021 when compared with the year-ago period with demand for senior professionals belonging to the 8-12 years (48%) experience bracket receiving maximum traction. 

“2022 has started on a resilient note with hiring sentiment improving across all sectors and cities, despite the third wave. While we saw spurts of growth during the year 2021, the first month of this year has kicked off with a bang as industries across India are gearing up for growth and getting past the previous year,” said Pawan Goyal, chief business officer, Naukri.com.