New Delhi, Aug 6 (IANS): Hiring activity in India touched an all-time high in July 2021, indicating a strong revival of economic growth and a sustained recovery from the impact of Covid-19 on business, according to the latest Naukri JobSpeak report.

The country's premier index on hiring trends grew by 11 per cent in July versus June, to touch 2,625, the highest it has ever been, including the pre-Covid timeline.

The rapid digital transformation across all sectors drove up the demand for jobs in the IT sector by 18 per cent, the report showed.

Sectors that were severely hit by the movement restrictions during the pandemic continued to show growth in hiring for the second month in a row, including hotels/restaurants/airlines/travel (up by 36 per cent) and retail (up by 17 per cent).

Hiring activity in accounting/taxation (up by 27 per cent), FMCG (up by 17 per cent), banking/financial services (up by 13 per cent) and education/teaching (up by 8 per cent) also saw positive sequential upswing during the same period.

The pharma/biotech/clinical research sector saw a marginal drop of 5 per cent in jobs while the media/dotcom/entertainment sector dropped by 15 per cent in July, the report said.

Prominent IT hubs such as Bengaluru (17 per cent), Hyderabad (16 per cent) and Pune (13 per cent) and megacities like Delhi/NCR (13 per cent) and Mumbai (10 per cent) witnessed double-digit growth in hiring during July vs June.

Among the smaller cities, Coimbatore (24 per cent) and Jaipur (11 per cent) clocked positive growth while Ahmedabad (3 per cent) was the only city to record negative numbers in July.

July also recorded a higher demand for jobs across all functional areas, with more job options for freshers.

"July '21 has provided conclusive proof of the revival of hiring activity in the country, after a setback in April and May '21. Not only has it increased by 11 per cent in this month, but the Naukri JobSpeak Index has reached an all-time high in July '21, even surpassing pre-Covid levels," said Pawan Goyal, Chief Business Officer, Naukri.com, in a statement.

"The most noteworthy and consistent growth over the last few months belongs to the IT/ITES sector and the tech functional area, which has stayed relatively insular to the effects of the pandemic. This demonstrates that digital transformation of Indian businesses is well underway and central to recovery efforts after the pandemic," he added.

Hiring activity also doubled (108 per cent) in July 2021 compared to July 2020, indicating that businesses were more prepared and recovered faster from the effect of the second Covid wave as against their response to the first wave last year.

The Naukri JobSpeak is a monthly Index that calculates and records hiring activity based on the job listings on Naukri.com website month on month.