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The job market will start getting on track from next quarter

- Anagh Pal

While the pandemic has brought a lot of bad news on the health front, news of job losses have also made headlines. The lockdown brought the economy to a grinding halt and that affected jobs to a large extent. Things have slightly improved with Unlock 1 and 2, but it will be a while before the job market is again at pre-pandemic levels.

Says Kamal Karanth, Co-Founder at specialist staffing firm Xpheno, “Unlock 2.0 opened with a slightly moderated enthusiasm in the organised job market, as compared to what was witnessed in 1.0. While June and early July saw a cleanup of some of the long-trailing job openings resulting in lesser active job counts, a slower top-up of new jobs only compounded the situation. An overall 35 per cent reduction in active openings over three-month period should be read in the context of a general slowdown in business activity across sectors.”

He adds that the total active job openings dropped from 200K in April to 167K in May and the closing figures for June was hovering at 132K. Early data indicators for July seem to point towards a climb to similar numbers as of May 2020. If the trend continues for rest of July and sustains for August, we will be possibly looking at the first V-shaped recovery graphs in the job market. We will have to wait a little longer to see if June 2020 was the true dip point in the jobs opportunities graph for now.