Telecom sector may lay off 60,000 jobs

 The massacre seems to continue in the telecom sector, there may be over 60,000 job cuts in India by the end of the current financial year. Here's the fact behind this dark forecast and more ...

Consolidation is the reason behind the jobs cuts, which is forcing operators, infrastructure providers, tower companies and associated retail units to optimise their staffing. Due to the price war, the revenue and profitability of telecom companies erode last year. As a result, some companies exited and others merged. As operators slashed costs, other businesses had to pull up their socks.

"Some 65,000 telecom sector workers will lose their jobs by March 31, sector will focus on hiring freshers,” said Rituparna Chakraborty, co-founder of TeamLease. Paul Dupuis, CEO of staffing firm Randstad India, added, “There will be an impact to the tune of 60,000-75,000 jobs on the workforce of telecom service and infrastructure providers in 2019 as a consequence of the consolidation activities.” He further added, “We expect the effect to continue through 2020 with a similar number of redundancies for the segments mentioned.”

According to TeamLease Services, customer support and financial functions may see a large number of jobs go. These two segments are expected to retrench about 8,000 and 7,000 employees, respectively. Companies will focus to hire talent in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), Big Data and 4G network expansion.