Hiring recovers by 18% to climb 30% in September: LinkedIn

LinkedIn has announced findings for the September edition of the ‘Labour Market Update’, a monthly update on hiring trends and insights based on LinkedIn's Economic Graph, a digital representation of the Indian economy built by conducting a close analysis of actions of 71+ million members in India.

Findings from the latest edition show that hiring continues to improve, competition for jobs is easing, and the digital divide is narrowing, suggesting a recovery in hiring for the non-tech sectors.

Hiring recovery in India reaches 30% year-on-year in September

 Earlier in the year, hiring declines reached a low of below -50% year-on-year in April, before starting to slowly recover. In late July, it crossed the 0% mark and continued increasing, reaching 12% in August and 30% year-on-year at the end of September. Hiring in September witnessed an 18 percentage points climb as compared to August 2020.

As businesses and companies continue reopening, we expect the recovery to continue as well.

Competition for jobs is lower compared to several months ago, but still 30% higher compared to a year ago

Competition for jobs remains the same as August 2020, at 30% higher as compared to last year. However, after nearly doubling in the middle of 2020, the applications per job dropped down 1.3x in August and stayed at a similar level in September.

Job seekers continue seeking opportunities in other industries, but under less pressure compared to June 2020

Compared to pre-COVID, we still see those job seekers who are currently in the badly affected sectors (such as Recreation & Travel) are 4.2 times more likely to look for jobs in a different sector, compared to pre-COVID. But this stress has abated from June 2020, where the likelihood was as high as 6.8 times.

Similarly, the stress for the Retail sector has reduced from 2.4 times to 1.1 times. There is not much change in other sectors.

Digital divide narrows by 18 percentage points from April to September 2020

Earlier this year during the height of COVID-19 lockdowns, those without digital skills were more affected by the hiring dips compared to those with disruptive digital skills (such as AI and Robotics).

Recovery was also faster for disruptive digital talent, but in recent months, this gap has started to narrow from over 20 percentage points difference in April and May to 2 percentage points difference in September. This possibly reflects the recovery of non-tech sectors.