Btech, MBA freshers opt for gig jobs: Teamlease
Fresh engineering and MBA graduates are increasingly applying for gig jobs, including those of drivers and delivery boys, according to staffing firm Teamlease.
The trend is across institutes and cities, as fresh graduates look at more lucrative salaries and flexible working hours, said Kaushik Banerjee, vice-president and business head for Teamlease and Freshersworld.com.
“Earlier engineering graduates used to get anywhere between ~20,000 and ~30,000 per month on average. Depending upon the college, it can go up. But this was the average — ~2.54 lakh. In the last two-three years, the core (tech) jobs have not come down, but the salaries have come down to about ~10,000-25,000,” said Banerjee.
A delivery person employed with a firm like Swiggy or Zomato, or a driver with Ola or Uber has a base salary of between ~25,000 and ~30,000. With incentives, it can go up to ~55,000-60,000, added Banerjee.
Spurred by good money and flexible working hours, engineering graduates have no qualms taking up gig jobs.
According to the data from Teamlease, the number of gig jobs that get posted on a daily basis is 920 on Freshersworld. com and 540 on Teamlease.
About 25 per cent of the 1.5million job applications a month are for gig jobs. TeamLease saw a twofold increase in gig job applications from JuneNovember 2019.
Further, about 10-11 per cent engineering and MBA freshers apply for these jobs.
Of the 60,000 daily job applications that people apply to on Teamlease’s different job sites, it is seeing about 8,000 core engineers and MBAS per day apply for jobs like drivers, delivery boys, etc.
Gig workers are usually spoken of in the context of a sharing economy, such Uber and Ola drivers, delivery persons for Zomato and Swiggy, and so on. These are jobs enabled by a tech platform where workers are not bound to the organisation.
However, the term could also refer to higher-skilled workers like coders or technology professionals working part-time or as freelancers.
The Indian government is considering bringing gig workers into the fold of labour laws and social security benefits, as are governments across the world.