Thursday, June 25, 2009: Tech is no longer the fastest growing industry; communication, energy and healthcare and pharma have overtaken the IT/ITeS sector this year with salary growth rates in excess of 10.8 per cent, according to the TeamLease Services' annual 'Temp Salary Primer 2009'. Also, the energy and healthcare and pharma industries have each hired 21 per cent more temps this year than in 2007.

The Temp Salary Primer 2009 is a report on skills and salary data of more than 75,000 temporary staff working across 264 different profiles, 13 industries and 8 functional domains in India.

According to Rajesh A R, vice president, temporary staffing, TeamLease Services, "The biggest upsides of the last year have been a higher returns to a skill and a blunting in the hyperinflation of employee costs. Rewards are starting to get more differentiated and the rise in overall hiring standards is creating huge productivity pressures for employees whose salaries had got ahead of their capabilities. Overwhelming feedback from employers and job seekers led us to launch an online support tool at www.indiasalary.in - India's first and one-of-its-kind online temp salary estimation system, built solely on authentic salary record data."

"In general, salaries between temp and perm (permanent) hiring are converging. The convergence is sharpest for candidates with zero to one year and one to three years experience. The variance between temp and perm salaries considerably narrowed this year also for the three to five years experience category we anticipate that the gap may soon be history. The convergence reflects labour market maturity and a more efficient people supply chain," adds Rajesh.

The healthcare and pharmaceutical industry prefers to hire mid to high experienced professionals, although IT and administration functions in the pharma sector have hired freshers. However, the ITeS sector has been promising for freshers, particularly from engineering and administration related background.

"We are also seeing the labour market becoming more sophisticated as the returns to skill increase quite substantially; this augurs well for the overall economy as it creates incentives for the private funding of skill development that will improve overall productivity," says Rajesh.

According to the study, Bengaluru leads in compensation for the IT and ITeS industries and Mumbai follows closely. Mumbai leads in manufacturing, retail, communication, energy and healthcare and pharma and Delhi is the favourite with BFSI, consumer durables and FMCG.

Mumbai, Bengaluru and Delhi pay the highest salaries and have also seen the best salary appreciation (11.62 per cent on an average). Goa, Indore and Ahmedabad are the most prominent amongst low paying/low growth rate locations (4.27 per cent on an average).