After losing her job at a store in Delhi’s Select City Walk Mall in March when the lockdown was announced, Ragini Sharma (name changed) has been unemployed for over four months now. A post-graduate in commerce and with over five years’ experience, Ragini has tried everything she could to get a job. “I requested my LinkedIn connections, but no luck. My family suggested waiting until the end of the lockdown. I have exhausted all my savings collected over years from a small salary of Rs 30,000 per month,” says Ragini, who has registered herself on six more job portals—naukri.com, monsterjob.com, Delhi government’s Rozgar Bazaar, Punjab government’s Punjab Ghar Ghar Rozgar, the central government’s ASEEM (Aatmanirbhar Skilled Employee Employer Mapping) and Pravasirozgar.com launched by Bollywood actor Sonu Sood.
According to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, the national unemployment rate went up from 8.67 per cent to 9.1 per cent in the week that ended on August 16. In the last two months, the central government and almost every state government launched web portals and mobile applications where employers can recruit people looking for jobs. Till the filing of this report, 8.3 lakh job seekers had registered on Punjab Ghar Ghar Rozgar, while the jobs posted were around 1.02 lakh. Similarly, Rozgar Bazaar launched by Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal on July 27 saw 8,27,626 job seekers register till the first week of August, against a total of 8,81,319 vacancies.
In Himachal Pradesh, which had nearly nine lakh people registered in the employment exchanges when the pandemic struck, the number of the unemployed went up significantly during the lockdown. The state government launched the Skill Register portal to create a database of people returning to Himachal. “As some have options to work from homes or return to work if conditions change, it seems not everybody has registered—16,229 people have registered themselves so far with our portal,” says Ashutosh Garg , director (information technology) with the Himachal government. Those registered include nearly 6,000 people with qualifications up to graduation level and more than 3,500 postgraduates; those with professional qualifications include doctors, management and IT professionals, engineers, media professionals and biotechnologists.
“The employment-employee gap has been rising substantially,” says a senior Punjab government official. “With the shortage in market demand, the manufacturing sector has been impacted the most. Although there are some trends of reverse migration post-lockdown, those coming back aren’t getting employment as desired in terms of wages. State governments are just trying to do their bit.”
Uttar Pradesh is busy with the skill-mapping exercise, while the Madhya Pradesh and Haryana governments have also announced job portals and apps. PM Narendra Modi launched ASEEM on July 11 and 69 lakh people got registered in just 40 days, according to media reports. However, only 2 per cent of the 3.7 lakh candidates who applied for jobs have got one. “After witnessing one of the sharpest dips in active job openings in June 2020, the job market has been steadily recovering since July,” says Kamal Karanth, co-founder of Xpheno, a specialist staffing company. “As the count of active openings nears the 2 lakh mark, there is a definite frenzy in the job market after a quarter. While Covid-related job losses have increased the availability of talent in the market, work-from-home has brought in a paradigm shift in hiring by enterprises. Recruitment has literally gone boundary-less, where enterprises are no longer restrained by geography in their hunt for talent. This has opened avenues for more recruitment solutions and boutique recruitment firms with a strong local focus and ecosystem access.”
According to Karanth, despite the presence of marquee job boards and recruitment platforms, there is huge room for hiring tech services and recruiters focused on tier-2 and tier-3 cities. Reverse migration in the organised workforce has moved the action out of the metros and anyone close to the migrated talent holds a huge local advantage. Work-from-home and remote working models have also triggered the wave of female professionals who are career re-starters. Both these domains—tier-2/3 and female workforce—are critical to government policy and hence the launch of government-sponsored job platforms and apps is no surprise. The largest economic rebalancing would be to put tier-2 and tier-3 cities into the larger economic picture and bring more women back into the active workforce. “Facilitating employment and mobility of workforce at the central and state levels comes with huge data incentives for the government machinery. One should hence expect to see more organised employment-facilitation initiatives, portals and apps coming into the fray,” Karanth adds.
“The response of industry, which is the biggest employer, is not as encouraging as we expected,” says Himachal labour and employment commissioner S.S. Guleria. “Though 106 industrialists have also registered themselves on the portal to offer jobs, the promoters are perhaps still not taking the call because the state’s industrial belt—Baddi, Brotiwala, Nalagarh in Solan district, Amb in Una and Paonta sahib in Sirmaur are coronavirus hotspots.”
The private sector too has caught on to the trend, either for philanthropic reasons or as a business opportunity. Sonu Sood’s Pravasirozgar.com claims to have arranged for over 3 lakh jobs and 20,000-plus ongoing interviews. The star’s initiative has partnered with companies like Trident Group, Amazon, JBM Group, Max Healthcare, Welspun India, Raymonds, Sodexo, Urban Company and Portea.
“With many employees—both blue- and white-collared ones—gone back home, and many white-collar ones continuing to work from home, any new job search is only happening remotely or virtually,” says Neeti Sharma of Teamlease, a recruitment agency. “Also, as many state governments are creating a database of returning migrant workers, there is a need to match demand and supply efficiently. The best way to reach out to job seekers given the current spread is virtually.”
Pointing out that hiring companies as well as many state and central government entities have come up with hiring apps, virtual job fairs and e-interviews, Sharma adds: “The number of job seekers applying for jobs on these apps has increased by over 50 per cent in the past few months. We see blue-collared workers applying through such apps—a first for many of them—making up about 10-12 per cent of the total. And the number of women applying for jobs through these portals is up by 35-40 per cent. We also see the number of job seekers from tier-2 and tier-3 cities go up by almost 80 per cent.”
Former Himachal industries minister Mukesh Agnihotri, however, calls the state government’s claims on the jobs front a gimmick. “Except for giving jobs to MGNREGA workers, not a single youth has got a job through the portal,” says the legislator from the Congress. “Unemployment is on the rise. This is an inevitable adverse fall-out of the lockdown. The governments, both at the Centre and in the state, have done nothing as more than two lakhs well-placed and working youths of Himachal Pradesh returned after losing their jobs.” Till now six lakh people have returned to the Himachal Pradesh since the outbreak of the pandemic, according to state government data.
