DNA Money Edit: Telecom job situation gets grimmer

The consolidation underway in the telecom sector and shutting down of businesses by smaller players, thanks to the disruptive entry of Reliance Jio, has severely hit employment opportunities. Every merger in the industry is rendering thousands of employees redundant. On the other hand, the move by Reliance Communications (RCom) to shut down most of its wireless business has resulted in massive layoffs.

After the merger between RCom and Aircel was called off, the latter is reportedly shrinking its network to focus on some circles. Apart from phone operators, there are others like tower companies and vendors struggling to remain afloat by shedding jobs. A recent report has pegged the total number of people who have lost job in the telecom sector at 75,000 while analysts believe that the total number could be upwards of one lakh easily.

All the leading players such as Airtel, Vodafone and Idea have reported a huge drop in their profits while RCom has reported a quarterly loss of Rs 2,709 crore as its revenues halved amid the price war.

Around 1.5 million jobs are believed to have been axed during January-April 2017, according to CMIE. Of course, some have managed to secure a job in sectors such as e-commerce, logistics and FMCG, but a large majority of them are forced to wait it out.