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Tech jobs recover a tad in November; positive movement for the first time in seven months

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India’s information technology services sector registered its first positive movement in white collar job openings in November after a seven-month slide even as hiring volume continues to be way below the year ago level, shows data from LinkedIn and other popular job boards put together by specialist staffing firm Xpheno.

IT services and software service sectors registered growth in active job volumes by 17% and 14%, respectively. A rise of 27% (on a low base value) was recorded by the internet-enabled services & start-up sector that closed with 14,000 openings as against 11,000 in October.

However, despite the positive movement, IT services recorded its second sharpest year-on-year decline of 39%.

The IT sector collective of services, products and internet enabled sectors, put out 124,000 jobs in November, as against 106,000 in October. This is the third lowest active jobs volume from the IT sector collective in over 28 months. On a month-on-month basis, the IT sector collectively registered a 17% rise in volume over October 2022. The IT sector’s contribution to overall active openings continued to be below 50% as seen in October. The sector had earlier held dominance with over 80% it had maintained over the last year. With the drop below 50%, the tech sector continued to lose its position as the primary hiring sector for white collar openings.

“While global big tech players and their counterparts continue to rock the boat with layoffs and hiring freezes, Indian IT majors and cohorts aren’t entirely following suit,” said Anil Ethanur, co-founder, Xpheno.

“There could well be a window of opportunity opening up for the Indian IT service sector, when global marquees under margin pressures, rework their plans to offshore jobs,” he said.

A separate set of data from foundit Insights Tracker (fit) also showed the tech industry inching towards recovery after months of slowdown with hiring activity increasing at 3% month-on-month. However, compared to last year when companies were aggressively hiring tech talent with wage hikes, bonuses and incentives amid high attrition, the tracker has noted a significant dip (-14% year-on-year) in hiring activity.

“Despite a slowdown in hiring for tech talent for the past few months, several industries, such as education and healthcare, are increasingly relying on technology to drive efficiency and productivity, indicating skilled talent will always be in demand,” said Sekhar Garisa, CEO – foundit (previously Monster APAC & ME), a Quess company.

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