Smaller towns creating more jobs than metros, finds study

As more and more businesses shift out of the congested and expensive metropolises to smaller towns, these 'tier II' and 'tier III' cities as they are called, accounted for a 60 per cent share of the total jobs created in the country last financial year, reveals an Assocham study.

Tier II and III cities are likely to generate 40 per cent more jobs in the near future, according to the placement pattern study, which analysed trends of job openings in 56 major cities and 32 sectors from a sample of 6.54 lakh employment opportunities generated in the last financial year.

While 17 tier II cities including Surat, Pune, Bhubaneshwar, Chandigarh and Lucknow had a 38.8-per cent share of job creation, with 253,702 new jobs, 33 tier III cities including Allahabad, Udaipur, Agra, Ajmer, Kota and Meerut accounted for a 23-per cent share, with 150,391 new jobs in the past one year.

Among tier II cities, Surat recorded an 8.8-per cent growth, while Bhubaneshwar and Pune recorded 42.2 per cent and 19.7 per cent growth in job creation. Chandigarh and Lucknow marked 12.2 per cent and 10.8 per cent growth respectively. The growth was 6.68 per cent in Jaipur, 4.33 per cent in Indore, 4 per cent in Nagpur, 3.35 per cent in Kochi, and 3.28 per cent in Ludhiana.

"Tier II and III cities are emerging as prominent destinations for companies to provide job opportunities for aspirants. The hiring activity during 2010-11 was more widespread than in many years as all key industries started rebuilding their staff strength and gearing up for an optimistic 2011-12,'' said D S Rawat, secretary-general of Assocham, while releasing the study in New Delhi on Monday.

In recent years, tier I cities like Delhi / NCR, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore had emerged as the fastest job generators, but the trend is clearly changing.