92% recruiters expect new, replacement hiring in first half of 2024: Report

Indian white-collar job market is expected to witness optimistic hiring sentiments during the first half of this year, with 92 per cent of recruiters expecting either new or replacement hiring in the first six months of 2024, a survey said on Friday.

Naukri's Hiring Outlook Survey is a bi-annual survey conducted amongst 1,200 recruiters and recruitment consultants across sectors pan-India.

"Reflecting on our recent Hiring Outlook findings, it's encouraging to see that 92 per cent of recruiters remain optimistic about new and replacement hiring in the first half of 2024. Coupled with anticipation around hiring trends returning to normalcy, the overall hiring outlook, while calibrated, seems to be stable and balanced," Naukri.com Chief Business Officer Pawan Goyal said.

The survey further showed that despite challenges in the IT sector, a majority of recruiters still anticipate that IT roles will dominate hiring activities.

This is attributed to significant IT recruitment taking place in non-IT sectors, stated the survey.

Some of the significant hiring in sectors other than IT are business development roles and supply chain roles, it said.

In contrast, the survey found that marketing roles were among the top three in the mix during the preceding six months.

The survey found that 75 per cent of recruiters anticipate that attrition rates will stay below 15 per cent from January to June 2024, marking a slight improvement from the previous two quarters.

Only a small fraction, 5 per cent, said they expect higher attrition rates of 40 per cent or more during the first 6 month of this year, it stated.

Lower attrition potentially points to people holding on to their jobs in the face of global headwinds, noted the survey.

As the IT/ITES sector face a global downturn and with layoffs and hiring freeze, many employees want to be stable in their job and stay in the companies they are working for, it added.

Around 67 per cent of recruiters surveyed forecasted 5-15 per cent increments across levels during the upcoming appraisal cycle, mirroring trends similar to the mid-year cycle.

Over 24 per cent recruiters expected to offer higher than usual increments, it added.

Despite a conservative global sentiment, industries such as infrastructure and manufacturing continue to project robust growth in the current economic environment of the country, contributing to higher increments, said the survey.