India Sees 10% Rise in White-Collar Hiring in October; Fresher Jobs Increase by 6%

White-collar hiring activity in India moved at a healthy pace in October. An important 10% increase in year-on-year growth was noted in oil and gas, pharma/biotech, FMCG, and IT, according to a report that came out on Monday.
Roles in AI/ML saw exceptional growth at 39% year-on-year and 2% month-on-month according to data by The Naukri JobSpeak Index.

ML engineer roles registered a remarkable 75 per cent growth. Notably, hiring in the IT sector showed positive growth in four out of seven months this fiscal, auguring well for balance of year trends.
Hiring for freshers showed encouraging signs with a 6 per cent year-on-year growth in October after a sluggish performance throughout the year.

The accelerating pace of fresher hiring is a strong indication of business confidence and presents exciting opportunities for upcoming graduates, " said Dr. Pawan Goyal, Chief Business Officer, Naukri.

Good jobs with performance: IT unicorns also gave excellent performances, growing at 28 per cent from white-collar hiring. Paradoxically, foreign MNCs and global capability centers in the IT space showed a spectacular increase of 5 per cent and 10 per cent, respectively, that had grown at a relatively slower pace across the year.

According to the report, the overall performance of GCCs remained buoyant and grew 17 percent year on year in October. The white-collar position also saw a sharp increase in data-focused jobs during the festive season as well.
The southern states showed excellent white-collar hiring with many cities reporting strong year-on-year increases.

Tamil Nadu was the leader with 24 per cent YoY growth, followed by Telangana at +16 per cent, Karnataka at +12 per cent, Andhra Pradesh at +9 per cent, and Kerala at +7 per cent.
Senior roles and strategic hires continued to drive job market growth. FMCG and pharmaceutical/biotechnology sectors were particularly keen on hiring experienced professionals, said the report.