Hiring activity remains stable in August, up 6% YoY led by steep growth in insurance sector - report

Hiring activity remained stable in August with a 6 per cent year-on-year growth, driven by the insurance sector, according to the Naukri JobSpeak Index.

There were 2,828 job postings on the Naukri.Com platform, as against 2,673 in the same month last year. However, sequentially the platform witnessed a 10.78 per cent decline in job postings compared to 3,170 in July.

The Naukri JobSpeak is a monthly index that calculates hiring activity based on the job listings on the Naukri.Com website every month.

The insurance sector, which posted an annual growth in hiring for the seventh time in a row, witnessed a steep year-on-year jump of 87 per cent.

Within the sector, maximum traction was seen for the 4-7 years' experience band (103 per cent), followed by 0-3 years (99 per cent) and 8-12 years (42 per cent).

City-wise, the insurance sector showed a significant jump in hiring activity in the National Capital Region (136 per cent) and Mumbai (129 per cent) in August 2022 compared to last year.

There has been a positive intent to hire in other sectors as well, including travel and hospitality (56 per cent), auto and auto ancillary (29 per cent), real estate (24 per cent) and retail (18 per cent).

While pharmaceutical and biotech remained flat, the IT/software sector recorded a decline of 10 per cent year-on-year in August.

Further, the index revealed that among tier-II cities, Coimbatore led with over 28 per cent y-on-y growth, followed by Kochi at 27 per cent.

Barring Chandigarh (-17 per cent) and Vadodara (-11 per cent), other emerging cities recorded double-digit growth in hiring activity in August.

Among the metros, Mumbai led at over 21 per cent growth, whereas Delhi/NCR, Hyderabad and Pune remained flat.

Bengaluru showed a dip of 10 per cent.

In terms of experience, hiring activity showed single-digit jump across all experience brackets such as 0-3 years (7 per cent), 4-7 years (5 per cent), 8-12 years (6 per cent), 13-16 years (7 per cent) and below 16 years (7 per cent).

"After witnessing an extravagant growth rate in the last 2-3 months, hiring activity is seeing signs of stabilisation, and it would be interesting to see how the trend continues in the coming months.

"Important to note that insurance as a sector has been flourishing since the start of this year as there has been continuous growth in hiring, which is creating opportunities across experience bands with over 100 per cent y-on-y growth in 0-7 years' experience band," Naukri.Com Chief Business Officer Pawan Goyal said.