While the IT sector has been reeling under the reported mass layoffs, things do not seem to be getting better any time soon as jobs in the country are unlikely to see any major growth this year. Landing new jobs this year may be tougher, thanks to numerous factors such as the Goods and Services Tax, demonetisation, and H-1B visa woes.
In fact, job growth this year is likely to be flat at 5-7 percent, according to the Times of India. The figure is about half of the 12-15 percent last year and the IT sector slowdown is said to be the reason behind it.
While hospitality, retail and fintech industry show a minute rise in hiring, the IT sector shows a decrease. According to Kelly's Services' data on jobs, the hospitality sector is likely to see a 15 percent increase and retail might see an 8 percent rise, but things look bleak for the IT industry, which is set to see a drop of about 18 percent.
"Going by early trends, increased hiring in other sectors, including retail, hospitality and fintech result in 5 per cent growth on an average, which is lower than 7-8 per cent that we saw in 2016," TOI quoted Thammaiah BN., MD, Kelly Services, as saying.
Meanwhile, Shailesh Singh, business head (RPO services), People Strong, explained that while the job market looked better last year with various government initiatives such as "Make in India" and "Digital India," their sheen has faded and concerns like GST, demonetisation and H-1B visa woes have taken over.
Not just hiring, salary trends too may not see a big change and retail, fintech and hospitality will continue to give out hikes in the range of 3-4 percent, similar to what it was in 2016.
"However, IT salaries do not follow this trend. Considering an employee who leaves a position, a replacement resource in traditional roles in application development, testing and maintenance, would see decrease in salary by 2-3 per cent in 2017.For new technologies like Big Data, Hadoop and Cloud, salaries have increased by 1.2-1.5 times," added Thammaiah.
Meanwhile, automation in various sectors may also have a role to play in the hiring slowdown. Most of the companies now rely on digital services, which has an impact on hiring.
"With automation, the number of people we are hiring in the past will not be the same. It will slow down a little bit. We are also looking at hiring very differential kind of people," Indian Express quoted Krishnamurthy Shankar, executive vice-president, group head, human resource development, Infosys, as saying.
Pankaj Bansal, co-founder and chief executive officer of PeopleStrong, noted that the job cuts due to automation may not show a drastic impact right away, but it will be visible by around 2020. "The change has started, with companies introducing bots for customer service, managing warehouses, etc.," he told LiveMint.
