According to research from blue-collar workforce management platform BetterPlace, after the post-pandemic opening up of the economy created 8 million new frontline employment in FY22, the number of such occupations decreased 17.5% to 6.6 million in FY23 due to macroeconomic challenges.
Front-line positions in industries like e-commerce, logistics, and mobility are good indicators of external economic conditions. The Frontline Index Report from BetterPlace, which was released on Monday, is based on information gathered on its platform between April 2022 and March 2023, and it indicates a 17.5% year-over-year fall in the number of new jobs.
This occurs at a time when India’s rural consumption demand has not yet fully recovered from the pandemic. In addition, lingering concerns about a US recession continue to affect the IT services sector, which in turn affects white-collar workers’ spending habits in India.
For instance, the research reveals that demand from e-commerce decreased by 52% last year even though it remains the second-largest employer of frontline employees, accounting for 33% of all jobs.
In FY23, “Logistics & Mobility” overtook “E-commerce” as the sector with the largest employment for front-line employees, with total demand generated rising by more than 11% over the previous fiscal year. When it came to the demand for front-line positions, IFM&IT grew the fastest, at a whopping 139 percent between FY22 and FY23.
According to Pravin Agarwala, co-founder and group CEO at BetterPlace, “the macroeconomic headwinds have forced businesses in India and Southeast Asia to rethink their hiring practices, which resulted in a decline in demand for frontline workers this year.”
He claimed that they were seeing “The Great Variabilization Trend.” “To save expenses, businesses are switching from fixed staff to task-based workers. Because businesses can now account for changing demand and control operational costs, this has increased signification. Therefore, we are observing that gig is now the standard in fields where it previously wasn’t very common.
