Job creation by corporate India hits three-year low

Job creation at Indian companies has hit a three-year slump as economic gloom persists and a large number of development projects remain stalled despite the government trying its best to get them moving again amid efforts to drum up investment and get growth back on track.

Employment growth slowed to 3.5% in FY13 from 5.7% in the year before and 6.4% in FY11, according to an ET Intelligence Group analysis of close to 250 companies belonging to the S&P BSE 500 index that have declared jobs data consistently over the past five years. Given the harsh environment, companies are clearly holding off on recruitments as they pare costs to boost earnings.

In absolute terms, the total employee strength at the 250 companies was 36.47 lakh in FY13, up from the year-before 35.24 lakh and 33.33 lakh in FY11.

This indicates that there were only 1.23 lakh net recruitments in FY13 compared with 1.91 lakh in FY12 and 2.02 lakh in FY11. The decline in hiring in FY13 was most marked in sectors such as automobiles, capital goods, tyres, shipping, paper, construction, power generation and retail in FY13, in line with the manufacturing sector being the worst hit by the slowdown and projects being stuck because various approvals have not been received.

A percentage point increase in GDP growth leads to the creation of nearly 7.5 lakh jobs, according to Balaji Ethirajan, managing director and chief executive officer at human resource firm Randstand India.

"Thus the drop in GDP (growth) from 9.53% in FY11 to 4.99% in FY13 implies that almost 30 lakh jobs have not kicked off in the economy during this period," he said.

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-10-04/news/42717996_1_capital-goods-sector-gdp-growth-job-creation

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