Hit by Covid-19 pandemic and nationwide lockdown, India saw a huge decline of 61% in hiring activity in May, the second consecutive month where the hiring activity registered a dip of more than 60%, job portal Naukri.com said on Monday.

The May decline in hiring was led by hotel, restaurant, travel and airlines industries (-91%), followed by retail (-87%), auto/ancillary (-76%), and BFSI (-70%).

“The extension of the lockdown has resulted in a continued decline in hiring activity for the third consecutive month,” said Pawan Goyal, Chief Business Officer, Naukri.com.

In a recently conducted survey with recruiters and HR heads, about 39% said that critical hiring is still taking place and we are seeing the same on the site with industries such as pharma, healthcare, insurance and IT-software posting jobs during the lockdown.

“At our end, we are also making all efforts to ensure that hiring and discovery of talent is effortless and under the ‘Step-Up’ initiative, have enabled easy access and discovery of laid-off jobseekers to recruiters,” Goyal said in a statement.

The job market across cities registered a double-digit dip in hiring of more than 50%, according to ‘The NaukriJobSpeak Index’ for May.

The decline was led by metros wherein Kolkata declined by 68%, followed by Delhi (-67%) and Mumbai (-67%).

There was an across the board decline in hiring at varied experience levels with the entry-level experience bands (0 to 3 years experience) witnessing the sharpest decline of 66%.

A latest survey by naukri.com revealed last last month that at least one in 10 Indian jobseeker confirmed he or she has been laid off and nearly three in 10 jobseekers fear a layoff was imminent.

Out of the 10% of jobseekers who have already been laid off, 15% were from the airlines and e-commerce industry each and around 14% were from the hospitality industry.

Around 13% of the laid-off employees were senior professionals with over 11 years of work experience and were working in either sales (12%), HR and admin (12%), marketing (11%) or operations/supply chain (11%) roles.

While the hiring activity is down by 61%, it is encouraging to see that more than 50% of jobseekers are utilizing the time at hand due to the lockdown for self-development and career advancement, as per the latest Naukri survey conducted with 50,000 jobseekers.

Data science and analytics courses (22%) followed by digital marketing (20%) and finance and risk management (16%) were among the top courses being picked up by jobseekers to up-skill