13 years in the past, in FY11, public sector banks employed 755,102 individuals, whereas on the finish of FY24, the quantity stood at 756,015, the RBI knowledge confirmed.
These banks have misplaced about 12% of their worker base within the final seven years. Between FY17 and FY24, public sector banks misplaced greater than 100,000 staff at the same time as workers throughout the nation’s banking sector elevated by almost half 1,000,000, the info confirmed. Curiously, non-public sector banks have doubled their workers rely to 845,841 in the identical interval.
The variety of staff in public sector banks was at its peak in FY17, after they had a complete of 857,500 workers. These embrace three classes of staff: officers, clerks and sub-staff. Clerks are current in financial institution branches the place they act as tellers, cashiers and are additionally liable for submitting paperwork. They’re additionally employed at administrative places of work of banks, aiding officers. The first distinction between a clerk and an officer is the latter’s skill to sanction loans.
Mint reported in September 2022 that the share of clerical jobs in India’s banking system has declined over the previous years, from the highs of over 50% within the early ’90s to 22% as of FY21, confirmed the newest segregated financial institution employment knowledge launched by the Reserve Financial institution of India final week. This has additional declined to 17.8%.
Specialists mentioned that jobs obtainable within the PSU and personal sector have gotten comparable with increased money payout within the non-public sector, attracting extra employment seekers.
“Within the mid-senior degree, PSUs provide housing amenities which work of their favour. Extra jobs and new-age alternatives can be found throughout the finance sector and due to this fact extra avenues to the brand new era workforce,” mentioned Upasana Agarwal, associate (skilled and monetary companies), ABC Consultants, a recruitment companies firm.
Agarwal mentioned that there’s demand for knowledgeable danger and regulatory jobs and the expertise at public sector banks is cell. Non-public sector corporations, she mentioned, are prepared to recruit from metros and non-metros from this obtainable expertise pool. “Non-public sector provides extra cash-in-hand and PSUs give extra advantages which might not be very engaging to the youthful workforce however in case you have labored in PSUs for over twenty years, then you might be a lot in demand.”
In accordance with a senior public sector financial institution government, the annual recruitments by state-owned banks have come down following the mergers of a number of such lenders. In April 2019, Dena Financial institution and Vijaya Financial institution merged into Dena Financial institution. This was adopted by 10 state-owned banks merging into 4 the subsequent 12 months.
“Most PSU banks are simply hiring to exchange attrition, as a substitute hiring in giant numbers like earlier,” the banker mentioned. “The tempo of addition of branches has additionally slowed down in the previous couple of years following the mergers. If there aren’t that many branches, why will banks recruit individuals?”
Information from the RBI confirmed that public sector banks accounted for 23% of the overall department additions in FY24, whereas the remainder was by non-public lenders. Even in FY23, non-public sector lenders outstripped their public sector counterparts in department additions, opening 3,473 new branches, as in opposition to 932 by state-owned lenders.
“We’re additionally noticing that some job seekers would fairly be a part of different authorities jobs as clerks than be a part of banks as officers,” the banker mentioned, including that the rationale behind this was the elevated strain on attaining targets by most banks.
Others mentioned that alternatives obtainable in different segments of the monetary companies house have additionally added to this erosion of PSU financial institution worker base.
“Between FY18-24 there was a digital revolution and fintech corporations have come up throughout this time; and digital funds have prompted fintech, non-banking monetary corporations (NBFCs), and small finance banks to increase,” mentioned Aditya Narayan Mishra, chief government officer of CIEL HR Companies, a staffing agency.
Mishra mentioned that these corporations have recruited from PSUs in capabilities like danger administration and different technical capabilities since state-owned banks have, over a few years, developed these insurance policies and practices. Another excuse might be the observe of transferring staff to completely different areas in PSU banks. In accordance with Mishra, such adjustments could not typically work out for workers who search for stability and higher financial advantages, prompting a lot of them to change out to the non-public sector.
