Despite the metropolitan cities offering maximum job avenues to the aspirants, the high cost of manpower and capacity constraints in these big cities is pushing industry to expanding its horizon towards small cities for job creation, according to ASSOCHAM Study on “Trends of Job Openings”.

Out of the total 60 cities that have been tracked by the ASSOCHAM Placement Pattern (APP), the tier II and tier III cities have cornered 28 per cent (total 14 tier II cities) and 38 per cent (total 39 tier III cities) share of the job space respectively in the first three months of the year 2008.

Among the tier II cities, Pune (16.50 per cent) and Lucknow (12.30 per cent) were the top cities providing maximum vacancies. Ranchi (13.80 per cent) and Mangalore (11.60 per cent) emerged as highest employment generating cities in the tier III segment.

The APP Study conducted for the period January-March 2008 also reveals that the rising demand and advantage of skilled and cheap manpower in tier II and tier III cities is pushing industry to look beyond the metropolitan cities that are expanding its sphere and providing large number of vacancies in these cities.

“A change in the job trend has been observed with emergence of small citiesamong the top employment generating places while traditionally the maximum of job openings used to be concentrated in metropolitan cities”, Mr. Venugopal N Dhoot, President, ASSOCHAM.

The APP was based on the sample of 32,000 vacancies posted by around 3,500 companies in the national and regional dailies, journals and job portals during the three months period of January-March 2008.

As per the study, the metropolitans continue to remain as the maximum employment-generating cities for the job seekers. The top four ranks were occupied by the tier I cities, with Mumbai topping the chart with a share of 18.52 per cent as the most prominent employment destination for the aspirants. It was followed by NCR (15.41 per cent), Delhi (11.55 per cent) and Bangalore (10.00 per cent) at second, third and fourth ranks respectively.

Among the tier III cities, Ranchi has emerged as the top employment provider with a share of 13.80 per cent in the sample jobs tracked by APP. The cities of Mangalore and Mysore were ranked second and third constituting 11.60 per cent and 11.08 per cent of the total vacancies offered.

After Mysore, the cities of Raipur, Udaipur and Aurangabad topped the chart with fourth, fifth and sixth ranks respectively of the tier III cities generating maximum employment opportunities. Out of the top ten tier III cities the last four ranks were occupied by the cities of Patiala, Jalandhar, Meerut and Vishakhapatnam respectively.

- Assocham