Demand for blue-collar jobs surged in April, May 2021: Report

New Delhi: Amid widespread reports of massive job losses due to the pandemic, blue-collar workforce management firm Betterplace Safety Solutions said demand for and onboarding of workers surged in April and May this year.

According to the latest CMIE report, the country lost as much as 25.3 million jobs since January -- 2.5 million in February, 0.1 million in March, 7.4 million in April and 15.3 million in May -- taking the unemployment rate to 11.9 per cent in May.

The 30-day moving average unemployment rate as of June 6 was 13 per cent and the labour participation rate that had fallen to 40 per cent has declined further to 39.7 per cent as of June 6. Last year, the job losses were reportedly at a whopping 75 million, as per the report.

According to the Jungle Ventures and Unitus Ventures-backed Betterplace, which has already onboarded over 20 million on its platform since its inception in 2015, there are over 450 million blue-collar workers in the country.

Bengaluru-based Betterplace, also backed by 3one4 Capital and Venture Highway, supplies blue-collar workers to large companies like Amazon, Flipkart, Ola, Dunzo, Swiggy, L&T, Flipkart, JBM Auto, Randstad, Sodexo, LIC, Accenture, among 1,000 other companies. Also Read: DNA Exclusive: 'Was happy that people had so much expectations from me': Sachin Tendulkar

Pravin Agarwala, co-founder and chief executive of Betterplace, told PTI that while they have on-boarded 1.15 lakh workers each in April and May this year, the demand for jobs reached a whopping 14.2 lakh in May across the country.

Of the 14.2 lakh demand, 2.6 lakh came for sales executives, 1.6 lakh for delivery boys, over 88,000 for retail sales executives and over 45,000 for basic emergency medical technicians, among others.

Betterplace Safety Solutions claims to be the country's largest and the world's sixth-largest tech platform for blue-collar workforce management. Also Read: Airtel’s bumper offer! Get fast internet with no daily cap tension for 60 days, check price, other details