Remarkable surge in ESG-related jobs over last 3 years, says report

There has been a remarkable surge in environment, social and governance (ESG) related jobs over the last three years, which is a testament to the growing focus on sustainability and corporate responsibility within the Indian job market, a report said on Monday.

According to a report by global job site Indeed, jobs related to the ESG sector have grown over 223 per cent in India between April 2019 to April 2023.

This report is based on data pooled from job postings and job searches on Indeed's platform between 2019 and 2023.

As per the report, the demand from jobseekers has seen a positive growth in the last one year.

Job searches for sustainability roles increased by 31 per cent between April 2022 and 2023, the highest growth in the last three years, said the report.

"The growing demand for ESG-related jobs indicates that employees, especially the younger ones today place much more importance on environmental and social concerns than the previous generation.

"The world of work now seems to be very involved and leveraging employees' passion areas across the ESG space," Indeed India Head of Sales Sashi Kumar said.

However, despite this massive increase, in 2022 there was a decline of 22 per cent in job postings for ESG jobs, it said.

This indicates that while sustainability formed a key part of organisational goals due to the pandemic, it may have cooled down in the last one year, the report added.

The report, further, revealed that, like India, a similar trend is seen in other Southeast Asian countries like Singapore and Malaysia, which saw a 146 per cent and 139 per cent increase, respectively, in ESG job postings in the last three years.

Just like India, both these countries saw a decline in job postings related to ESG jobs last year with Singapore witnessing 29 per cent decline while Malaysia seeing 10 per cent dip.

However, Singapore and Malaysia saw a strong growth in demand from jobseekers at 71 per cent and 111 per cent, respectively, in the last three years, it added.