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As winter creeps in, India’s frosty job market, among the worst in the country’s history, finally seems to be warming up. Campus placements signal green shoots.The turning tide is discernible on multiple counts: quantum of job offers, salary levels, diversity of recruiters, continental spread and the number of pre-placement offers (PPOs).PPOs rose 25-30% in top colleges. Job offers have increased across campuses. Amazon, aggressive on India, will visit 90 engineering colleges and B-schools to fill a 25% rise in jobs at the company this year. At IIT-Bombay, international offers have risen from 50 in 2016 to 60 this year.Many first-time recruiters like US-based cloud data manager Rubrik, Amsterdam’s Optiver and UK’s Halma are hiring from Indian campuses. Besides American and European MNCs, Asian companies from Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore are making both domestic and global job offers.Government data on jobs, employment and the country’s 470 million-plus workforce is either patchy, dated or unavailable. But all anecdotal evidence suggests that 2017 has been one of the toughest years for the job market. And for the NDA government, which came to power promising 10 million jobs a year, the jobless growth has been a monkey on its back.Flavours of 2017 ET Magazine partnered with employment services company TeamLease Services, digital platform Quikr, which acquired online platform for blue-collar jobs babajob.com earlier this year, and executive search firm EMA Partners and tapped into other recently released surveys to find out how India stacked up against the world.Based on what job seekers are searching, Indeed, a global job search platform, mined data across 10 countries. India seems to be straddling two very different worlds. On the one hand, job seekers look for government jobs and ayurveda has come up as an attractive option. On the other hand, technology is a big favourite as well.Remote/work from home, digital marketing and technology are among the top searched words. In the US, “cannabis/marijuana” surged 401% and “hurricane relief” 682%. However, many were trying to start a new chapter in their work life, as jobs where “no experience required” jumped 1,140%. In contrast, job seekers in the UK searched for blockchain, cyber security and overseas nurse programmes in the age of Brexit.Average salary hikes in India was among the highest in the world, at 10%, compared with other developed markets ( Japan 2%, US 3% and UK 2.9%) and emerging markets (China 7%). But one needs to factor in India’s low salary levels and relatively higher inflation rates before celebrating.Zooming in on Details The TeamLease Employment Outlook report, based on half-yearly surveys with 715 small, medium and large firms, found a clear divide between big cities and small cities, and big companies and small companies. Hiring outlook in tier-I cities and large companies is substantially better. However, recruiters see employment outlook improving in the coming months“This tells us that companies are finally thinking of rolling out new projects, which will mean hiring CXOs to lead the charge,” says Rituparno Chakraborty, executive vice-president, TeamLease Services.A large part of India’s workforce is in the informal economy. Domestic household workers like cooks and cleaners alone are officially estimated to be 4.2 million but many experts put it closer to 50 million. These below-the-radar jobs have virtually no data available. Quikr-Jobs mined data on its platform for salaries, candidate profile and job openings for positions like maid, carpenter, driver, mechanic and security guard. Demonetisation and GST seem to have dented both salary levels and job openings in this category (see chart View from the Bottom). But thanks to rising e-commerce, salaries of delivery boys jumped 50% between 2016 and 2017. Average salary for blue-collar workers rose 13% in 2017 over 2016. “What online job platforms did to white-collar job market in the early 2000s is now happening in this segment,” says Amit Jain, head of QuikrJobs. Deeper penetration of smartphones and cheaper devices, with Reliance Jio making data affordable, and a growing comfort with social media are all reshaping the way workers at the bottom of the pyramid seek and find jobs. For one, job hopping becomes easier.“For higher wages, they don’t just change jobs, they walk across the road and even change professions,” says Jain. For instance, a delivery boy becoming a driver if that pays a better salary. Job portals, which were purely dependent on referrals earlier, are now making this end of the job market more transparent with access to data on salaries and job openings. However, the workers’ poor geographical mobility within the city continues. “They still look for jobs in 5-10 km radius. Both commute time and cost issues are hurdles.”These workers are also moving towards semi-formalisation. While demonetisation and GST are pushing corporate sector to formalise, incentives to bring workers under the EPFO (Employees Provident Fund Organisation) have had a positive impact. Now there are 4.5 crore EPFO accounts and more than a crore were added after January. Over 400 million unorganised workers are expected to be allotted unique numbers under UWIN (unorganised workers identification number) by the next financial year to help provide them basic welfare, insurance and medical benefits.However, with few new projects, muted investments and a bad debt overhang, Indian companies are in a sombre mood. Critical sectors like IT, telecom, BFSI and automobile are undergoing structural shifts. With Reliance Jio’s onslaught, telecom shed over 75,000 jobs in the last one year and is likely to lose another 40,000 soon. IT companies from Capgemini to Cognizant are laying off or offering VRS to their senior-level executives. BFSI companies like HDFC Bank , preparing for the digital onslaught, are cutting down staff. “There is a glut at that end of the market with a flood of resumes and fewer job openings,” says K Sudarshan, managing partner, EMA Partners.A Year of Correction “2017 was a year of correction” says Ajit Isaac, chairman, Quess Corp. Attrition levels came down, average tenure of executives rose while take-home or real wages for executives hurt. 2017 was a year of the ecosystem changing, with the old giving way to the new, says Ronesh Puri, MD, Executive Access. Corporate governance made headlines while defaulters like Vijay Mallya felt the heat amid India’s NPA crisis . “Clients are cautious about hiring and have a lot more filters to vet candidates,” says Puri.Arvind Usretay, director, rewards, Willis Towers Watson India, says the salary allocation gap between top and average performers is widening.“This is a year of reset. At no point in India’s history have so many disruptive factors converged to shake up the corporate sector. It has had a significant impact on the job market,” says Pankaj Bansal, cofounder, PeopleStrong. Delayering is one big trend that Bansal notices where the number of levels in corporate hierarchy has halved from five-six to three, making many mid-level positions redundant. Digital disruption is a constant theme.The good news is 2018 looks better. “Starting from the infrastructure sector led by the government, I see a pickup in 2018,” says Rumjhum Chatterjee, co-founder, Feedback Infra. She sees her company’s headcount go up from 8200 in 2017 to 10,000 in 2018. “We are shrinking our team in areas like real estate and hiring more in urban infrastructure,” she adds. No surprises that the demand for freshers on campuses — the easiest lot to make a new beginning — is looking good.