Festive season to witness 4.5L new jobs

E- tailers, retail sector plan to add staff to meet rising demand

New Delhi, Oct. 21: It’s raining jobs this festive season as the OctoberDecember quarter is likely to create as many as 4.5 lakh vacancies thanks to a significant uptrend in demand from sectors such as e- commerce, hospitality and retail, experts say.

The hiring landscape has seen an improvement in the past few months thanks to the revival in business sentiments and scenario, and with the onset of the festival sea- son, there is a renewed focus on employing additional staff to boost businesses.

“The hiring is anticipated to be up by 5- 15 per cent during the festive season. The job generation in Q3 is likely to be 3- 4.5 lakh with majority demand from e- commerce, hospitality and retail industry,” Indian Staffing Federation ED Suchita Dutta said.

Swati Bhargava, cofounder, CashKaro. com, a cashback and coupons website, also echoed similar sentiments and said that this festive season “there has been a 300 per cent increase in number of transactions during the festive period as compared to the rest of the year! That is due to the wide array of discounts and promotions being offered to bring new shoppers online and drive repeat purchases.”

Historically, during the festive seasons there was huge sale across all industries and in order to cater to the large footfall of customers there is a need of manpower,

TeamLease Services assistant VP Sudeep Sen said, “Conservatively speaking, in the retail sector only, keeping in mind the organised and compli- ant wage payers, minimum of 25,000 jobs are created across metro and cosmo cities,” Mr Sen added.

While India celebrates festivals throughout the year, the last few months are relatively busier, starting with Dussehra celebrated earlier this month, followed by Diwali and then Christmas and New Year. Consumer spending during these months increases significantly which required more manpower.