White collar jobs dip 16% in Dec amid cautious recruitment across IT and other sectors

White collar hiring in India witnessed a 16 per cent decline in December compared to the year-ago period due to cautious hiring sentiments in IT, BPO, education, retail and healthcare sectors, a report said on Tuesday.

"We observed marginal sequential growth of 2 per cent in December hiring activity compared to November, driven by non-IT sectors. However, the IT sector continued to be significantly impacted pulling the overall index down by 16 per cent against last year signalling a longer wait for a complete recovery in IT hiring," Naukri.com Chief Business Officer Pawan Goyal said analysing the Naukri JobSpeak Index.

According to the Naukri JobSpeak Index, sectors like BPO, education, retail, and healthcare displayed cautious hiring sentiments, witnessing a year-on-year decline of 17 per cent, 11 per cent, 11 per cent and 10 per cent, respectively, in job offers in December.

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Hiring in the IT sector reflected the trend seen in the second half of 2023, the report noted.

The sector witnessed a decline of 21 per cent in hiring during December 2023, against the same month last year and a fall of 4 per cent compared to the preceding month of November 2023.

However, full stack data scientist, IT infrastructure engineer, and automation engineer were some of the job roles that saw decent hiring despite a cautious job market for the IT industry, it added.

Although new job offers in the oil and gas sector were not spectacular in December 2023, it stayed at the level witnessed in the same month a year ago.

The Naukri JobSpeak is a monthly index representing the state of the Indian job market and hiring activity on new job listings and job-related searches by recruiters on the resume database of Naukri.com.

Meanwhile, the report found that the hospitality sector continued its growth momentum in new job offers with a 4 per cent increase in hiring compared to December last year.

The job growth for this sector is highest in Mumbai and Delhi-NCR. Senior professionals with over 16 years of experience emerged as the most sought-after candidates for hiring in the sector.

The pharma sector saw an increase of 2 per cent in hiring in December 2023 compared to the corresponding month of 2022, it said, adding that the sector experienced maximum growth in new job offers in Ahmedabad, Vadodara, and Mumbai.

The report also revealed that non-metro cities outshined their metro peers in terms of hiring in December 2023.

Vadodara registered a annual growth of 3 per cent in new job offers last month, the report said, adding that the growth is noticeably better than that of metros.

Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune and Kolkata registered declines of 24 per cent, 23 per cent, 23 per cent, 17 per cent and 16 per cent, respectively, it added.