New Delhi,  Overall hiring activity in India declined by 18 per cent in March, with travel and airlines, hospitality and retail industries witnessing a massive 56 per cent drop in offering jobs as compared to March last year, leading job portal Naukri.com said on Tuesday.

The retail sector saw 50 per cent drop in hiring, followed by auto/ancillary (38 per cent), pharma (26 per cent), insurance (11 per cent), accounting/finance (10 per cent), IT-software (9 per cent) and BFSI (9 per cent), according to the ‘Naukri JobSpeak Index' for March 2020.

According to Pawan Goyal, Chief Business Officer at Naukri.com, the hiring activity for the first 20 days on March 2020 saw only a 5 per cent decline.

"However, due to the nationwide lockdown, there was a substantial drop in recruitment activity in the last 10 days, which resulted in overall drop of 18 per cent in hiring," said Goyal.

The hiring activity showed early signs of slowdown starting from January where the index grew by only 5.75 per cent, followed by no growth in February.

The job market across cities registered a dip in hiring activity.

The decline was led by metros, wherein Delhi declined by 26 per cent, followed by Chennai and Hyderabad at 24 per cent and 18 per cent, respectively.

In Delhi/NCR, pharma industry saw a dip in hiring by 66 per cent and 43 per cent, respectively.

Recruitment activities across all experience levels saw a negative growth. The demand for professionals in hospitality (63 per cent), banking (28 per cent), accounting (23 per cent) and IT-Hardware (22 per cent) sectors marked a substantial negative growth in the Capital.

Overall, there was an across the board decline in hiring activity at experience levels as well with senior experience bands (over 13 years of experience) witnessing the sharpest decline of 29 per cent while the entry-level experience band (0 to 7 years) saw a decline of 16 per cent.

Some of the key industries like IT, BPO/ITES, BFSI and accounting/finance that form a significant base of hiring activity in India within the white collar segment have shown a lesser decline during these unprecedented times.

As compared to the overall ‘JobSpeak' index decline of 18 per cent during March 2020, the hiring activity in IT-software industry declined by 9 per cent, IT-hardware by 7 per cent, accounting/finance by 10 per cent, BFSI by 9 per cent and BPO/ITES by 1 per cent.

New jobs for professionals in the hotel/restaurants, ticketing/travel/airlines and marketing/advertising/MR/PR sectors witnessed a dip of 51 per cent, 48 per cent and 33 per cent, respectively.

Functional roles in HR/administration (29 per cent), banking/insurance (23 per cent), sales/business development (20 per cent) and IT-software (16 per cent) also witnessed a decline.

"It is a great time for jobseekers to upskill themselves be leveraging e-learning," said Goyal.