India’s festive season added nearly 700,000 gig jobs across the country, which is around 10% more than the non-festival period hiring, as e-commerce and retail companies hired more hands to meet the increased demand for consumer goods, reports the Financial Express, citing research from TeamLease. The total number of gig workers before the festival period addition was estimated to be around 7-8 million. “Consumer demand during the festive season has been more than what the companies had expected. They needed more people to care for that so they hired more contractual staff,” said Balasubramanian A, vice president and business head at TeamLease Services.

For comparison, last year about 400,000-500,000 gig jobs were added during the festive season. This year, the surge largely came from e-commerce or logistics companies who hired for roles such as delivery personnel, and warehouse operations personnel, and also from retail companies who hired for sales and service technicians.

Consumer demand witnessed a significant spike right from the beginning of the annual Hindu festival Navaratri week this year, Balasubramanian said, adding that the surge in demand was aided by cooling inflation and the subsequent price stability which wasn’t there a year ago. The last couple of years have seen dampened festive season sales due to the lingering effects of the pandemic and then severe inflation induced by the Russia-Ukraine war. A rise in input costs for consumer goods was subsequently passed on to the customers, which in turn impacted demand sentiments.

However, consumer price inflation seemed to be cooling off this festive season. As per October data, retail inflation eased to a four-month low of 4.87% from 5.02% the previous month.