Few takers for govt’s National Career Service portal

The National Career Service (NCS) portal, a government-run online job platform, continues to remain the most unlikely place for employers to scout for talent to fill various vacant positions, and for job seekers to find employment.

Nearly four crore job seekers and over 15 lakh employers are registered on the portal but just about eight lakh vacancies have been posted there as of December 2017.

Posting of vacancies on the portal continues to stay sluggish, even though the number of job seekers is rising. This gap between demand and availability of jobs, as illustrated by the NCS portal, may reflect the slow generation of jobs in the economy.

The NCS portal was launched in July 2017 to replace the National Employment Service comprising a network of 978 employment exchanges. The portal has data of live registration as well as those migrated from various sources.

Registration by job seekers and employers as well as of vacancies has slowed in the current financial year after witnessing a jump in 2016-17.

As of March 2016, the financial year in which the portal was launched, 3.6 crore job seekers, 9.6 lakh employers and 45,911 vacancies were registered with it.

In 2016-17, 22.7 lakh job seekers and 5.6 lakh employers registered with the portal and 5.2 lakh vacancies were posted. In the nine months of the current financial year, an additional 12.72 lakh job seekers had registered. However, the number of new employers registering slumped to 1,891 and the number of vacancies posted too has been lower at 2.5 lakh.

The NCS data show that of the 3.95 crore job seekers, about 65 per cent are men. Over 46 per cent of those registered are in the 24-34 age group, a little over 24 per cent are in the 18-24 age group and about 22 per cent are between 35 and 44 years old.

Tamil Nadu and West Bengal accounted for the largest number of registration at a little over 21 per cent each. A little over 10 per cent of the job seekers were from Maharashtra and about 9 per cent from Gujarat. In the current financial year, States such as Bihar, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal accounted for the largest number of registration.

The employment status of most job seekers registering on the portal was not known, and just a little over 11 per cent mentioned that they were unemployed at the time of registration. This could imply most who have registered are employed in some form and are seeking better opportunities. Also, what is not known is if those who found jobs continue to stay registered on the portal.

Employers from Maharashtra accounted for nearly 14 per cent of registrations, followed by those from Tamil Nadu at almost 10 per cent. Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat are also among States accounting for a significant number of employer registration.

Among the industries using the portal for hiring, the information and communication accounted for about 45 per cent of the vacancies posted.

Significantly, the Central and State governments as well as enterprises run by them rarely posted job vacancies on the platform. They have posted just 334 job vacancies, of which 232 were posted between April and December 2017.

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