Eight sectors agriculture & agrochemicals, BFSI, e-commerce & tech startups, educational services, healthcare & pharmaceuticals, information technology & knowledge services, power & energy, and telecommunications have shown a gradual progression towards recovery and to pre-Covid business activity levels out of seventeen sectors, a survey on ‘Jobs and Salaries’ for FY21 stated.

Hospitality and industrial manufacturing continue to be in a subside, while the automobile & allied industry, BPO & ITeS, construction & real estate, and fast-moving consumer durables (FMCD) & fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sectors are still stagnating.

However, the variance between salaries for permanent and temporary job profiles is down to under 5 per cent for nearly 30 per cent of all profiles across all sectors. Sectors like agriculture & agrochemicals, construction & real estate, FMCD, FMCG, healthcare & pharmaceuticals, hospitality, industrial manufacturing & allied, media & entertainment, power & energy, retail and telecommunications industries, and BPO and IT-enabled Services have shown less than 5 per cent variance between salaries for permanent and temporary job profiles.

Despite the severity of the second wave, the market demand for Covid-proof job profiles is likely to remain steady across sectors, the report suggested. Strained financials and re-induced uncertainty have meant even more job profiles under scrutiny for increment decisions. 

“Besides the Covid-warrior fraternity, frontline job roles in conventional business are spearheaded by the sales and service functions, and remote work is led by the IT function – all of this across sectors and cities. These droves of talent are keeping the engines running for businesses and are instrumental in helping businesses effect the pay actions with aplomb,” Rituparna Chakraborty, TeamLease Services Ltd co-founder and executive vice president, stated. 

Job profiles such as artificial intelligence specialist, augmented reality expert, genomic portfolio director, master edge computing, digital imaging leader were among the most sought-after jobs, categorized as ‘hottest hot jobs’ in the report. 

High expertise-based job profiles have steadily grown in criticality, over the last 12 months, and are seen by employers to be indispensable. These attract around 11 per cent salary increment or more, as compared with market averages ranging between 1.73 per cent and 14.07 per cent across sectors and cities, the report mentioned.