Flat YoY growth for white-collar hirings in May; pulled down by IT, retail: Report

India’s white-collar segment recorded steady but flat hiring activity in May 2023 and growth across sectors such as real estate, banking, oil and gas, and pharma, a report said on Thursday (June 1).

According to the Naukri JobSpeak Index, job postings for white collar hiring in May 2023 was recorded at 2,849, as against 2,863 in May 2022.

The relatively flat growth in index masks strong divergence in hiring trends across different sectors and geographies, said the report.

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The Naukri JobSpeak Index is a monthly index representing the state of the Indian job market and hiring activity based on new job listings and job-related searches by recruiters on the resume database of Naukri.com.

Winners and losers

It said that while the oil and gas sector clearly emerged as a hiring hotspot, with a remarkable 31 per cent increase in new jobs compared to last year, the hiring activity in the IT sector stayed at 23 per cent below its level in May 2022.

“The multi-sectoral growth in white-collar hiring across sectors such as real estate, banking, oil and gas, and pharma reflect the evolving and diversified nature of the Indian economy,” Naukri.com Chief Business Officer Pawan Goyal said.

IT woes

However, IT industry hiring remained an area of concern, the report said. “The decline in hiring was witnessed across all types of IT companies including global tech giants, large IT services companies, tech-focused startups, and unicorns,” said the report.

Cities with a heavy presence of IT-focused companies, such as Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Pune, were the hardest hit.

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Notwithstanding these challenges, niche roles such as Machine Learning Engineers and Big Data Engineers showed positive hiring trends, bucking the negative trend across most other tech roles.

Besides IT, sectors such as retail, education, insurance, and BPO also showed cautious hiring sentiments with a dip of 21 per cent, 16 per cent, 15 per cent, and 14 per cent, respectively, in hiring trends during May compared to the corresponding month in 2022.

Brights spots

In contrast, the real estate and banking sectors continued to show positive hiring sentiments, registering 22 per cent and 14 per cent growth in hiring activities, respectively, compared to May last year.

The pharma sector emerged as another bright spot, recording a respectable 11 per cent growth in hiring activity compared to May last year, the report said, adding that automobiles and hospitality were some of the other sectors showing positive hiring sentiments, with 10 per cent and 8 per cent growth in the new jobs created compared to a year ago.

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Non-metro cities — led by Ahmedabad, Vadodara, and Jaipur — emerged as new hiring trendsetters, primarily driven by banking and auto sectors. On the other hand, hiring activity stayed flat or declined marginally in large metros, except Mumbai and Delhi.

(With agency inputs)