The employment scenario is looking up as nearly 75% of the employers are in the process of hiring people, and will continue their recruitment throughout 2026, said the latest Unstop report. The report shows that just abut 12% of the employers in India Inc have put a hiring freeze for 2026, and 90% of the employers have grown their hiring budget in 2026, signalling a strong job scenario.

The report points out that employers are increasingly preferring modern skills over the premium institutes when it comes to hiring. For instance, 64% of the employers have said that consider training AI/ML, data science, cloud and cybersecurity to be a “premium talent”. In comparison, just 31% employers recognise students of premier league institutes like IIT, IIM and NIT as premium.

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Death of the Pedigree Premium

Unstop has also revealed that the degree premiums are actively eroding across all streams. In case of MBAs, it said that a majority (30%) of the MBA hires are paid below Rs 10 lakh per annum (LPA) with only 4% of the MBAs getting over Rs 30 LPA. For engineering graduates, 39% of the hires earn below Rs 7 LPA, and nearly a third of undergraduates (from non-engineering backgrounds) are earning Rs 3-5 LPA.

Education Disconnect

The erosion of pedigree premium can be contributed to the growing disconnect between the curriculum of educational institutions and the industry needs. The report noted that 58% of the employers said that B-school education is not really aligned and relevant. The disconnect is even higher for undergrad programmes where 72% of employers reported that the curriculum is broadly irrelevant.

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Meanwhile, the report said that up to 98% of students believe that skills-first hiring is already happening across industries. “This near-universal belief in skills-first is a massive tailwind for companies building competency-based hiring. But belief alone doesn’t bridge the 45-55% who still have no formal AI training,” the report stated.

Further, the report suggested that sectors like banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), manufacturing, e-commerce and GCCs are still struggling with the skill gap when it comes to AI readiness.