Companies in India are engaging gig economy and temporary workers to meet immediate demand, but are uncertain about long-term demand and are delaying hiring of permanent staff, reports The Economic Times, citing staffing firms. India’s festival season is expected further to prop up the temporary and gig worker demand in the coming two quarters. While ed-tech, fintech, financial, diagnostics and ecommerce companies have been driving demand so far, staffing services providers also expect large enterprises in FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods), retail and IT/ITeS (IT enabled services) also to contribute to the mix going forward.

Lohit Bhatia, president of Quess, said the second wave of the pandemic didn't have much impact on jobs. Consumer goods companies had cut jobs during the lockdowns last year, and didn't hire them back in the interim. As a result, they didn't have to fire employees this year, he said. Bhatia said the second and third quarters were usually the best from a staffing perspective, "because of a lot of festivals which leads to more demand". Meanwhile task fulfilment platforms such as Awign, Taskmo and GigIndia, which provide workers for extremely short term, such as daily gigs, as well as longer-term engagements, reported seeing a rapid increase in companies seeking temporary workers, even compared to pre-second wave.