Along with another encrypted app, Telegram, Signal has been the main beneficiary of online outrage around the changes announced last week, which require WhatsApp users to share their data with both Facebook and Instagram.

Telegram said on Wednesday it had surpassed 500 million active users globally. Brian Acton, who co-founded WhatsApp before selling it to Facebook and then co-founding the Signal Foundation, declined to give equivalent data for Signal but said that the expansion in recent days had been “vertical”. “We’ve seen unprecedented growth this past week,” Acton said in an email to Reuters.

He also said Signal was working to improve its video and group chat functions, making it a better user-friendly messaging app than WhatsApp, Microsoft Teams, and other conferencing apps.

Signal was downloaded by 17.8 million users over the past seven days. WhatsApp was downloaded by 10.6 million users during the same period, a 17% decline.

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With a slowing economy and the Covid-19 pandemic , India is witnessing the weakest hiring sentiment in 15 years with just 3 per cent companies planning to add staff in the next three months , according to survey of over 800 employers .

The survey is done by Manpower Group Employment Outlook Survey. The survey covered 813 firms across India.
As per the survey , 7 percent of employers anticipate an increase in payrolls. However 3 percent predicts a decrease and 54 percent expect no change.

“Hiring sentiment is the weakest since the survey began 15 years ago, remaining relatively stable when compared with the previous quarter, but declining by 16 percentage points in comparison with this time one year ago,” the survey said.

The strongest hiring pace is recorded in the small-sized organisations followed by the medium-sized and large-sized firms. From a region perspective, north and east regions indicate a more positive outlook compared to the west and south, the survey said.

The companies are aligning themselves to the current market demands . Organisations are now looking at improving productivity, new forms of employee engagement and implementation of technology.

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The world’s biggest lockdown forced 122 million people out of jobs in India in April 2020, according to estimates by Center for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE).

Employment plunged in April after the government imposed a 40-day lockdown in a nation of 1.3 billion people, forcing businesses to shut and pushing up the jobless rate to 27.1% in the week ended May 3, surveys by CMIE showed.

Daily wage workers and those employed by small businesses have taken a massive blow, according to CMIE. These include hawkers, roadside vendors, workers employed in the construction industry and many who eke out a living by pushing handcarts to rickshaws.

The estimates of India’s job losses are more than four times the 30 million Americans who’ve filed for unemployment benefits over six weeks. The data could get worse in India with the lockdown extended in many areas, the CMIE warned.

The government began easing restrictions in some areas in the mid week of May, resulting in violence and chaos as liquor stores reopened and transport resumed for migrant workers stranded during the lockdown.

The economic crisis will be one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s biggest tests.

The CMIE figures show more people are also looking for jobs amid the downturn. The labor participation rate rose to 36.2% in the week ended May 3 from 35.4% previously.

The last official unemployment figures from the government, released in May 2019, estimated the unemployment rate at 6.1% in the year to June 2018.

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