India’s job market is showing signs of a comeback, with the IT sector leading the way. According to a report from Naukri JobSpeak on Wednesday, there was a 9% sequential growth in hiring across India in February, with the IT sector seeing a 10% rise in new jobs compared to the previous month. This growth is a welcome sign for the industry, which had experienced negative trends in the past few months due to the global meltdown and layoffs.
The report showed that the demand for specialist roles such as analytics managers, big data engineers, Cloud system administrators, and augmented reality QA Testers, increased by 29%, 25%, 21%, and 20%, respectively. The demand for DevOps and DevSec engineers increased by 19% and 18%, respectively.
This outpaced the demand for data scientists and software developers, which has increased by 17% and 11%, respectively. The number of new jobs in real estate, hospitality and healthcare sectors saw double-digit sequential growth of 13%, 10%, and 10%, respectively in February over January.
Moreover, sectors such as banking, BPO, and retail showed similar trends with the number of new jobs increasing by 9%, 7%, and 7%, respectively over the previous month, the report showed. “The IT sector, which had been experiencing negative trends in the past three months, showed a sequential growth of 10%. This growth is an indicator of changing hiring sentiments within the IT space,” said Pawan Goyal, chief business officer, Naukri.com.
Among the top metros, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and Pune witnessed double-digit growth in hiring activity. Among emerging cities, the number of new jobs in Coimbatore and Chandigarh increased significantly.
Salary hikes reverted to pre-pandemic level: Mercer
According to a survey by consulting firm Mercer, India Inc has returned to pre-pandemic levels of salary increases across industries. In 2022, salaries increased by 9-9.5% on average, compared to 8% on average in 2021. The report said that the highest wage increases are expected in the high-tech industry in 2023, followed by the Software Service Outsourcing industry. The salary increases in sectors such as technology, healthcare, services, and global capability centres were higher than expected, thanks to tailwinds such as the accelerated shift to digitalization, increased demand for healthcare products and services, and the subsequent emergence of medical tourism, India’s large talent pool, and relative cost advantages as a result of global geopolitical shifts.