Overall hiring activity in India declined by 18 per cent in March, with travel and airlines, hospitality and retail industries witnessing a massive 56 per cent drop in offering jobs as compared to March last year, leading job portal Naukri.com said on Tuesday. The retail sector saw 50 per cent drop in hiring, followed by auto/ancillary (38 per cent), pharma (26 per cent), insurance (11 per cent), accounting/finance (10 per cent), IT-software (9 per cent) and BFSI (9 per cent), according to the ‘Naukri JobSpeak Index’ for March 2020.

According to Pawan Goyal, Chief Business Officer at Naukri.com, the hiring activity for the first 20 days on March 2020 saw only a 5 per cent decline. “However, due to the nationwide lockdown, there was a substantial drop in recruitment activity in the last 10 days, which resulted in overall drop of 18 per cent in hiring,” said Goyal. The hiring activity showed early signs of slowdown starting from January where the index grew by only 5.75 per cent, followed by no growth in February.