More than half, or 54%, of employers in India are planning to hire during the April to June 2022 quarter, this is up 4% from the previous quarter, according to the latest Employment Outlook Report from TeamLease Services.

The report is based on a survey and analysis carried out during January and February 2022. The survey covers 796 small, medium and large companies across the 21 sectors across India.

By sector, intent to hire in the information technology sector stood at 95%, up from 89% last quarter. The IT sector was followed by Educational Services (86%), which experienced a 6% rise from last quarter. Other sectors that have seen a significant hiring intent, include Ecommerce & Technology Start-Ups (81%) and Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals (78%). However, some sectors lag behind such as Manufacturing, Engineering & Infrastructure, with hiring intent of 50% or below.

Metro and Tier 1 cities are leading the way in hiring, with the hiring intent of 83% each for both.

Bangalore and Chennai have the highest hiring intent, at 91% and 78%, increasing from 88% and 71% respectively. Gurgaon (44%) and Ahmedabad (50%) reported moderate levels of hiring intent.

Meanwhile, large organisations noticed a step up in their hiring intent to 65%, with entry level (53%) and junior level (51%) jobs scaling up.

The growing market trend has propped up demand for sales roles, which showed the strongest intent to hire at 82% among all functional areas, followed by Information Technology with 75%.

"While the overall growth in intent may be moderate, more than 14 per cent of the sectors have indicated a double digit growth indicating that the modest approach will soon taper off and the appetite to scale up manpower will grow significantly," Rituparna Chakraborty, Co-Founder & Executive Vice President, TeamLease Services, said.

The report also showed hiring intentions for the Americas region as well as APAC, Middle East, Africa and Europe. The Americas region saw an increase of 4% in intent to hire while APAC reported a 3% gain. The Middle East reported an increase of 3% while Africa saw an increase of 2%. Hiring intentions in Europe were flat compared to the previous quarter.