Hiring for tech job roles is at an all-time high, up by 39 per cent in May, 2021 Vs May, 2019, according to the Naukri JobSpeak Index.

At an overall hiring level, Naukri JobSpeak stabilized and turned flat (-1 per cent) in May, 2021, at 2,047 versus April, 2021.

Hiring activity in the Education/Teaching sector grew by +7 per cent sequentially in May, 2021 after posting a continuous decline over the past few months. The hiring in the sector is led by marquee EdTech startups on Naukri.com including Byjus, Vedantu, Toppr and Unacademy to name a few. The shutdown of hotels, restaurants and non-essential offices led to a sequential decline in hiring in sectors such as Hospitality (-41 per cent) and Retail (-20 per cent) in May, 2021. Sectors such as Banking/Finance (-15 per cent), FMCG (-13 per cent) and BPO/ITES (-10 per cent) remained impacted in hiring activity in May, 2021 Vs April, 2021.

Major IT Hubs like Pune (+12 per cent), Bangalore (+9 per cent) and Hyderabad (+4 per cent) saw an uptick in hiring activity in May, 2021 Vs Apri, 2021 led by tech talent demand. With Maharashtra successfully containing the pandemic, hiring activity grew by +5 per cent sequentially in Mumbai. On the other hand, hiring in Delhi/NCR remained impacted and declined by 11 per cent in May, 2021 Vs April, 2021. As the pandemic impacts smaller cities in the second wave, tier-2 cities remain impacted in hiring including Jaipur (-19%), Vadodara (-9%) and Coimbatore (-5%).

Commenting on the report, Pawan Goyal, Chief Business Officer, Naukri.com said, "It is encouraging to see a much lesser impact of the second wave of the pandemic on the job economy versus last year. Even though the hiring activity declined by 15 per cent in Apr'21 over Mar'21, we see hiring turning flat in May, 2021, signaling resilience and recovery. With the year 2021 seeing a strong wave of hyper-digitization, the IT sector continues to drive hiring, recording a robust +14 per cent sequential growth in May, 2021. In fact, hiring for tech roles is at an all-time high versus pre-COVID levels; growing at 39 per cent in May, 2021 over May, 2019."

Hiring activity for professionals with 8-12 years' experience (+4 per cent) as well as more than 16 years' experience (+4 per cent) grew sequentially in May'21. This indicates that organizations prefer experienced professionals to steer them through these turbulent times. Adversely, the 0-3 years' experience band is seeing a consistent decline in sequential hiring over the past few months with the hiring declining by 7 per cent for the segment in May, 2021.

The Naukri JobSpeak index reports a +14 per cent increase in demand for tech professionals in May, 2021 Vs April, 2021 as the majority of tech giants announced bulk-hiring plans for 2021. IT roles have seen aggressive hiring on Naukri.com from companies such as Adobe, IBM, Accenture, Oracle, Udaan, Flipkart, Meesho, Motorola, SAP and Nike India to name a few.

The demand for professionals in HR/Admin (-4 per cent), ITES/BPO (-8 per cent) and Content/Journalism (-8 per cent) domains was also less impacted in May '21 sequentially. Amidst the lockdown restrictions across the country, sequential hiring for Sales/BD (-20 per cent), Production/Quality (-22 per cent) and Purchase/Logistics (-14 per cent) roles saw a decline in May, 2021.