By Shashi Bhushan New Delhi, Feb 21 : Since its launch in mid-July last year, the Aatmanirbhar Skilled Employee Employer Mapping (ASEEM) initiative has extended more than 18 lakh job opportunities. On July 10 last year, the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) launched the ASEEM portal. MSDE Secretary Pravin Kumar said that the portal acts as a skill directory and has all information on industry demand, supply and analytics that show trends as well as capture the outcome. "ASEEM is an integrated skill management information system which is designed as a workforce market policy instrument to improve the information flow in the workforce market," he said. As per the ministry data, most of the demand aggregated so far is in logistics (22.7 per cent), retail (17.4 per cent), apparel (10.3 per cent), healthcare (9.1 per cent) and electronics and hardware (6.2 per cent) sectors. "The logistics sector has the maximum open jobs posted, followed by retail. Put together, these five sectors contribute 65.7 per cent of the total jobs posted so far," the data revealed. The data further showed that about 40 per cent job opportunities are extended to the age group of 25 years and below, 26-30 years (15 per cent), above 31-35 years (10 per cent) and above 35 years (35 per cent). Similarly, the top five job roles in demand are courier delivery executive (15.6 per cent), retail sales associates (12.5 per cent), emergency medical technician (6.6 per cent), self employed tailor (4.2 per cent), and accounts executive (2.6 per cent). These put together is about 41.5 per cent of the total demand, the data showed. Karnataka (29.8 per cent), Tamil Nadu (13.2 per cent), Maharashtra (11.5 per cent), Delhi (7.4 per cent) and Telangana (5.5 per cent), which make up to 67.4 per cent of the total active jobs posted, have the maximum demand for professionals. About 13 per cent of the active jobs are reserved for female candidates. "This portal aims to provide accurate, objective, relevant, timely and accessible workforce information which is critical for building a skilled workforce that promotes business competitiveness and economic growth," Kumar said. (Shashi Bhushan can be contacted at shashi.b@ians.in) /IANS