With artificial intelligence (AI), hospitality and real estate driving hiring momentum, India’s white-collar job market posted a steady 4% year-on-year growth in February, according to the latest Naukri JobSpeak Index released on Monday. The index stood at 2,890 points, reflecting an improving employment landscape, especially in sectors that struggled in 2024.
“AI/ML hiring continues its buoyant trend; it is also encouraging to see sectors like hospitality and real estate driving growth,” said Pawan Goyal, chief business officer at Naukri.
The AI-ML sector saw a 21% rise in hiring, while the hospitality industry rebounded strongly with a 20% year-on-year increase, reversing last February’s 3% decline. Real estate hiring increased 9%, underscoring a broad recovery in key industries.
However, the job market showed a mixed picture for core sectors.
FMCG (+8%), pharma (+5%) and global capability centres (+2%) saw modest gains, but banking hiring declined 6%. Meanwhile, IT hiring remained flat overall but showed signs of recovery, particularly in emerging centres such as Jaipur (+19%) and Coimbatore (+10%).
Although the overall retail sector witnessed a 4% decline, certain sub-sectors showed strong growth. Consumer durables (+25%), garments and accessories (+15%), and beauty and wellness (+13%) posted advances, notably in fresher hiring.
The surge in hiring extended to specialised tech roles, with data scientists (+76%) and machine learning engineers (+70%) seeing the highest growth. Other high-demand roles included search engineers (+52%) and security consultants (+44%).
Fresh graduate hiring remained mostly stable, but the hospitality and telecom sectors stood out with 23% and 11% increases, respectively.
Senior professionals with over 16 years of experience also saw a hiring uptick (+15%), with high-salary roles (Rs 20 lakh per annum-plus) witnessing a 21% jump.
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