Hiring activity picks up in five metros, shows survey

Hiring activity picked up in five metros, including Delhi and Mumbai, in July with employers from the pharmaceutical, automobile, and information technology sectors leading the recruitment drive, according to a survey.

A three-month moving hiring average for sectors like real estate, semiconductors, banking, automobiles, and IT showed that recruitment was up in these industries as compared to previous quarters, the hiring scenario survey by recruitment portal naukri.com said.

"The uptrend over consecutive months is encouraging," said Sumeet Singh, national head (marketing and communications) of Info Edge, parent company of naukri.com. "Improvement in hiring activity in lagging industries such as IT, real estate, retail and auto echoes optimism [sic].

"However, [only] continued increases in hiring activity over the next few months will indicate a turnaround in economic activity and in hiring."

Delhi-NCR (national capital region) saw hiring activity move up by 7% in July as compared to June, while fresh jobs in Mumbai grew for a second consecutive month, rising by 3%.

Chandigarh, Jaipur, and Hyderabad also created more jobs in July than the previous month, the survey said.

While the pharmaceutical and biotech industries continued to add new jobs at a fast pace, growing by 10% in July over the previous month, the real estate and retail sectors generated 16% and 10% jobs, respectively.

Jobs in the automobile and auto ancillary industries were up 11% last month as compared to June.

Telecom and financial services continued to lose jobs, with hiring activity dipping by 10% in the telecom sector, while jobs in banking and financial services were down 7%.