Hiring activity in India fell by 17% in October 2020 when compared to the same period last year, according to the latest Naukri JobSpeak Index. The Index covers hiring trends in India based on listing on the Naukri.com job board.When compared to the same period last year, industries such as insurance (2%), pharma and biotech (6 %), BPO/ITES (business process outsourcing and IT enabled services) (9%) and auto and ancillary (7%) remained less impacted in year-on-year hiring activities.

The index has shown improvement compared to the prior month. The slight improvement in the October 20 annual growth (versus -23% in Sept 2020 year-on-year) is owing to lower bases last year on account of Diwali.

Among sectors, the Naukri Index showed improved month-on-month hiring in the IT-software and services sector (7%). At the same time, the hospitality, travel and retail sectors have begun to show signs of recovery with 33% and 12% growth over the last month on the back of the festival season.

Despite the monthly recovery, the decline on a year-on-year basis is still martked: hospitality and travel (-58%), retail (-37%) and IT-software (-23%) sectors continued to be the most impacted in October.

Among key cities, Bengaluru (8%) and Chennai (6%) led month-on-month recovery, followed by Kochi (9%) and Coimbatore (5% from the tier-II city cluster of cities. Monthly declines were seen in Kolkata (-4%) and Ahmedabad (-6 %).

On a yearly basis, hiring in the metro cities of Mumbai decreased by 28%, followed by Hyderabad (-26%) and Chennai (-24%). Hiring in Chandigarh saw an uptick of 13%, year-on-year, while it remained almost flat in Kochi at 1% growth.

Among experience levels, entry-level experience bands (0 to 3 years) saw the sharpest decline at 21% in October compared to the same period last year.