Ma Foi's job survey paints poor picture

The Ma Foi Employment Survey (MEtS) for April-June released here on Monday painted a bleak picture of the employment generation in the country.

"Jobs can't be created without policy clarity," said K Pandia Rajan, CEO and managing director, Ma Foi Management Consultants, pointing out how the delays in implementing policies and differences within the ruling parties has made companies adopt a wait and watch policy.

The survey, conducted across 2,047 employers across 17 sectors, showed that the Ma Foi Employment Index (MEI) stood at only 1.28 per cent in the April-June quarter while it was higher at 3.35 per cent for the earlier quarter i.e. January to March.

The index measures the pace of recruitment activity/hiring needs of employers i.e. employment opportunities being created across 17 sectors in India.

The overall hiring has dropped as compared to last quarter, says the survey, because of the general slowdown in the country due to financial year-end and hiring plans due to financial year-end and hiring plans for the year which are yet to be firmed by the companies.

The telecom sector ranks as the first in the MEI, followed by IT and ITES in the second and third places respectively. The others are retail, pharmaceutical, hospitality, transport and logistics, print, media and entertainment, infrastructure and textiles.

The MEI saw Karnataka being placed only seventh in the hiring index. Here Tamil Nadu leads with a score of 3.16 followed by Andhra Pradesh with 2.67 and Karnataka seventh with 1.17.

The MEtS pointed out that smaller firms were more keen on hiring, especially those with turnover of less than Rs 100 crore. They showed an MEI of 3.04. This was in contrast to the bigger companies that showed a much lower MEI. The most disturbing fact was the MEI of only .27 seen among the companies that had turnover of over Rs 1,000 crore.