The job scene has become absolutely unclear, because everything that’s being done to ‘murder the COVID-19 murders the economy,’ but that’s the right sequence, said Manish Sabharwal, chairman, Teamlease, a temporary staffing organisation.
The current situation thrown at the country, its businesses and its people by COVID-19, is ‘unmodellable’ and the net effect and emotional contagion will have a longer tail than the virus itself, he told The Hindu.
“Employers think about hiring and jobs in linear terms, but unfortunately the virus works in non-linear terms. With regard to existing jobs and the outlook for additional jobs, everybody is pretty much unclear. We should wait before we try and come up with scenarios for job markets.’’
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There’s a huge difference between risk and uncertainty and nobody will be able to predict or plot different scenarios under uncertainty, as per Mr. Sabharwal.
On the impact of COVID-19 on businesses and employment, he said, “Right now, no one can foresee anything as it is premature for anyone to model the impact. We don’t know how long the situation will remain like this. Our priority is to deal with first things first, that’s saving lives. The first input we feed on a GPS is where you are and not where you are going.’’
According to Mr. Sabharwal, enterprises in the country will be able to absorb losses and repair supply chain damages if the situation ends within a month, but if it continues for two or three months, then the recovery will move to the ‘realm of policy.’
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