About 100 to 120 million blue-collar workers, accounting for over 70-80% of the industry, have gone without income in the past month due to the nationwide lockdown imposed in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic , staffing agencies and businesses told ET. Jobs are also expected to nosedive in the remaining quarters of the year unless demand picks up by the festive season later this year, the experts tracking the sector said.“The slowdown started around mid-March and only around 2-3 crore (20-30 million) people now have their employment intact,” said Pravin Agarwala, co-founder of Betterplace, which connects blue-collar workers with companies.Travel, hospitality retail , outdoor entertainment, food and beverages and the real estate sectors have been hit the most, staffing agency TeamLease said.In addition, automotive, non-essential fast-moving consumer goods, poultry, dairy, shipping and construction will also feel the impact in the short- to medium term, TeamLease said.“These sectors are bound to see the repercussions…we haven’t yet witnessed the peak, given most formal sector employees saw their wages by and large being paid in full and on time during the lockdown,” said Rituparna Chakraborty, co-founder of TeamLease.“More challenges will come up after the lockdown is lifted. For informal sector workers who were left without livelihood since the beginning of the lockdown, it has been a daily battle,” Chakraborty added.Contract employees are mostly paid by the hour, but during the lockdown they have earned next to nothing.As businesses shut down, drivers, delivery staff, sales and business development employees have been handed pink slips overnight, with between one to three-month severance packages.Apart from new-age startups like business-to-business e-commerce platform Udaan, food-delivery app Swiggy, social commerce venture Meesho and logistics firm BlackBuck, which have terminated contractual employees over the last few weeks, even traditional sectors have been laying off staff, staffing agencies say."Gig workers are hit badly without assured minimum wages, social security in their arrangement. It may impact attracting new personnel to gig work lot more, making hiring difficult. Revival of jobs will happen from Q2 in some least impacted sectors, to Q3 for slightly more impacted, and last for the tourism based economy," said Lohit Bhatia, president of workforce management, Quess Corp Limited.The gig economy workforce, part of the blue-collar segment, including shared mobility and e-commerce staff have seen incomes decline by 60-70%.Employees from companies such as services marketplace UrbanClap and Swiggy said businesses were restarting slowly but demand is down by 40-50%.In the absence of a pick-up in demand by Dussehra, the number of staff will either stay stagnant or go down further by year end, experts said.However, in case demand picks up later in the year, companies will find it difficult to hire migrant workers as most of them are waiting to return to their hometowns, said Agarwala of Betterplace.The pressure is also directly affecting staffing agencies who employ contract workers.For instance, Quess Corp has seen its stock price drop 66% to Rs 206 as of last close from Rs 618 in February. Team Lease has seen its stock plummet by 37% to Rs 1,599. The overall market size of the staffing industry is pegged at Rs 71,200 crore.