More than six listed lifestyle and grocery retailers added 180,000 jobs last fiscal, reversing a trend of declining jobs in FY21 when most brands fired staff and imposed a hiring freeze amid falling sales and lockdowns.
Eight retailers, including Reliance Retail, Raymond, Titan, Shoppers Stop, Bata among others saw a robust rise of around 57 per cent in their combined workforce to nearly 490,000 employees, ET reported, citing their latest annual reports.
It is important to mention in this context that the increase in staff count was across permanent and contractual workers because of the aggressive expansion of their store network last year and re-established operations.
Retail is one of the top six sectors on hiring intent in the current quarter, as per HR firm TeamLease ’s latest hiring outlook report.
“Significant investments are happening in the retail sector. Companies are looking to use this fresh capital to shore up hiring across multiple verticals, with some startups looking to add more physical stores too,” the financial daily quoted TeamLease executive director Rituparna Chakraborty.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Retail grabbed the lion’s share by adding 161,000 employees to its workforce. In the last June quarter, Reliance Retail maintained the momentum of employment generation by rolling out 17,000 new jobs, driven by store network expansion and ecommerce business.
Lifestyle retail chain Shoppers Stop, however, has reduced its workforce consistently over the past two years.
In FY22, top-listed retailers and quick-service restaurant chains opened around nine new stores every day on an average, doubling the growth rate from a year ago.
Around 16. 7 million sq ft of retail space would be added by eight large, listed retail chains between FY21 and FY24, more than 100 per cent compared with 8 million added in the preceding four years, the publication mentioned, citing a report by ICICI Securities.
According to the ICRA report, the sector is expected to see 12-13 per cent year-on-year revenue growth in FY23, with a jump in operating profit margins by 150 bps to 8. 2 per cent.
