IT-focused cities in India seeing job de-growth: Naukri JobSpeak report

Indian information technology (IT) hubs like Pune, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune witnessed job de-growth in October, a report released on Friday showed. Overall, the hiring in the IT sector fell the highest among other sectors, in October. On the other hand, the highest growth was seen in the oil & gas/power sector.

According to the Naukri JobSpeak Report, driven by new projects of domestic and global energy giants, the IT sector saw a de-growth of 14 per cent in hiring in the month as compared to October 2022. The monthly report is released on the resume database of Naukri.com.

"While Delhi-NCR and Mumbai clocked 5 per cent and 4 per cent growth in new job offers, Kolkata and IT-focused metros such as Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune and Chennai saw de-growth of 6-11 per cent," the report said. The fall was steepest in Chennai at 11 per cent, followed by 9 per cent in Bengaluru and 7 per cent in Hyderabad. 

Pune and Kolkata saw a de-growth of 6 per cent in October as compared to the same month last year. In smaller cities, Kochi reported a de-growth of 18 per cent and Coimbatore 7 per cent.

On the other side, in metro cities, Delhi saw a growth of 5 per cent and 4 per cent in Mumbai. In emerging cities, Vadodara reported the highest jump in growth, listing at 37 per cent. It was followed by 22 per cent in Ahmedabad and 10 per cent in Jaipur.

The index value, for white-collar hiring in India, stood at 2484 in October 2023, flattish over 2455 recorded in October 2022. However, the gain in the index was due to the low-base effect and is expected to fall in the coming months.

"The reported job growth numbers are, however, also benefiting from the low base effect of last year's festival season in October and may moderate in the coming month," said Pawan Goyal, chief business officer at Naukri.com. 

Among the sectors that saw high growth in hiring, oil & gas/power (24 per cent) was followed by pharma research and development (19 per cent) and banking/finance/broking (13 per cent). Among the sectors where the de-growth was highest, IT was followed by education (10 per cent) and telecom (9 per cent). The report further suggested that the market is now preferring experienced professionals over freshers.

The hiring for professionals with more than 16 years of experience jumped about 46 per cent in October 2023 over October 2022. The hiring numbers for professionals with 13-16 years of experience increased by 26 per cent.

On the other hand, the new job offers for professionals with 8-12 years of experience and for people with 4-7 years of experience contracted by 9 per cent and 10 per cent respectively. For people with experience of less than three years, the demand growth was flat.

The hiring for freshers decreased by 10% in September 2023.