Software leads boom in jobs

Accounts for 121,275 new jobs created in 2006-07.

The software sector has once again underlined its importance to the country by accounting for more than half of the total jobs created by Indian industry in the last financial year.

According to the latest available data, 675 companies created 209,142 jobs in 2006-07. Of this, 121,275 were by software companies.

Public sector companies, many of which have been weighed down for years by manpower flab, continue to cut it mainly by not replacing those that retire. The staff strength of PSUs declined by 34,442 even as they recruited 11,404, resulting in a net reduction of 23,038 jobs. In other words, the private sector actually created 232,180 new jobs. Comparative data for the previous year is available only for 475 companies, which increased their headcount by 157,422 in 2006-07, an increase of 42 per cent over the 2005-06 figure of 110,470. The corporate sector had created 60,000 jobs in 2004-05 and a minuscule 5,000 in 2003-04.

The software sector is on course to surpass itself this financial year. The Big Five in the sector "" TCS, Wipro, Infosys, Satyam Computer and HCL Technologies "" added 63,400 employees in the first half of 2007-08 compared with 70,000 in the whole of 2006-07.

In the list of the biggest recruiters, software is followed by textile companies that have retail shops and export garments (28,407 new jobs), engineering and capital goods (16,514), banks (14,076), securities and commodity traders (8,442) and pharmaceuticals (8,064). Housing and infrastructure (3,547), print and electronic media (1,143 jobs), hotels (1,692 jobs), power (2,149 jobs), airlines (3,041 jobs) and healthcare services including clinics (3,104) also contributed.

Private sector banks continued to add more jobs than their peers in the public sector.