A day after companies announced creation of over 50,000 new jobs in India, global recruitment and human resource consultancy major Manpower said on Monday its business in the country has slowed down by 15-20 per cent.
The company believes that although the Indian job market will not be affected to the extent in the US, yet it will be another year-or-so before they are able to stabilise.
"Our business in India, which is less than one per cent of our global $21 billion business across the world, has witnessed a 15-20 per cent decline due to the current meltdown.
"This has been basically due to the reluctance of the ITeS sector to hire new manpower and also because of employee nervousness and natural hesitation to leave their current jobs," Manpower Global chairman and CEO Jeffrey Joerres told reporters on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum's India edition in New Delhi.
However, only on Sunday, a slew of companies, including SBI, MetLife and Maruti announced plans to hire in multiples of thousands, while Infosys announced on Monday it would stick to its target of recruiting 25,000.
Joerres said Manpower, which has 35,000 employees worldwide including 600 full-time employees in India, might go for a small trimming of their payrolls.
"But it would be less than 5 per cent of our total global employee strength. Although we have not fixed an exact number as yet," Joerres said.
He said globally the company expects massive layoffs in sector like finance, banking and ITeS.
"We expect that in the next quarter the situatrion would get much worse due to lessening of demand which will result in less demand for skilled labour.
"But demand is likely to stabilise in the first quarter of the next fiscal and then there will either be a slight upward trend or further downturn in the global markets," Joerres added.
Regarding India, he said MNCs are likely to adjust their staff strengths, but a reduction in employee numbers will not be as big as in the western nations.
He, however, said that Manpower's own business in India might not see the 60-70 per cent growth which the company reported in 2007.
"We are holding reservations till December regarding our growth figure, but it will not be as high as last year," Joerres said.
