Non-tech sector main driver of white-collar hiring in last 4 months

Manufacturing, services, automotive, consumer, telecom, oil & energy, hospitality & tourism, and infrastructure continue to power India's white-collar job market over the last four months at a time when the overall hiring action has been on a decline amid macroeconomic headwinds and high inflation.

The non-tech cohort together put out nearly 100,000 active openings in August, accounting for 37% of the total active demand (versus 66,000 in April at the start of the fiscal year) amid a simultaneous revival in consumption and growth in some of these sectors, according to data from LinkedIn and top company job boards put together by specialist staffing firm Xpheno. Yet, the total number of open white-collar job vacancies in August fell to 260,000 from 270,000 in July and down 6% from a year earlier, the data showed. The numbers matched the low count registered in February 2021.

This is because IT services industry, the biggest employment generator in the country, recorded its lowest count in 15 months (down 14%) as companies turn cautious about onboarding new talent amid rising wage cost and high inflation in key client markets. The entire tech cohort comprising services, products and GICs (global in-house centres, or captives of global companies in India) have been seeing a slowdown in hiring volume and velocity in the last six months.

"The IT sector seems to have hit the brakes after quarters of high volume and high velocity hiring," said Anil Ethanur, cofounder at Xpheno. "The drop in action from the tech sector has been well compensated by strong performance from non-tech sectors that are seen consistently putting out active demand in the job market this fiscal," he added.

Economists and job market experts said the positivity in the non-tech cohort is mostly driven by positive economic indicators such as rise in GST collections and private sector capital expenditure, and an expected revival in rural consumption.

"These are all sectors that have started showing signs of higher growth and this is the right time for companies to hire in the white-collar segment, looking at the manpower requirement from a five-year perspective," said Madan Sabnavis, chief economist at Bank of Baroda.

"FMCG companies are gung-ho about the next quarter and rural demand is expected to pick up. Infrastructure and financial services are doing well. In the auto sector, demand is expected to increase as semiconductor problem ease and supply improves," he said. "The war in Ukraine had no major repercussions and commodity prices are easing globally," Sabnavis said. He also cited robust GST collection and an increase in government's capital expenditure.

India's goods and services tax (GST) collection stood at ₹1.43 lakh crore in August, up 28% year on year.

Experts said the upcoming festive months will keep the revenue mop-up robust.

"The amount of hiring we are doing in infrastructure is unprecedented with increase in capex from government and projects going up," Vimal Kejriwal, MD of KEC International, a part of the RPG Group, told ET in a recent interaction.

Some of the top profiles which are in demand across non-tech sectors include 5G-linked hiring in telecom; components, consumer electronics and semiconductors-related hiring in manufacturing; electric vehicles, engineering, and R&D (research & development) hiring in auto industry; sales, customer service and operations hiring in hospitality & tourism; branch operations, customer service and analytics-linked hiring in BFSI (or banking, financial services, and insurance); and, sales, operations, and engineering-related jobs in oil and energy sectors.