White collar hiring dips 9% in October amid festive slowdown: Report

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The white-collar hiring activity in October declined 9 per cent year-on-year as the Diwali-Dussehra festive holidays temporarily impacted recruitment momentum, a report said on Monday.

India's white-collar hiring activity eased in October as the Diwali-Dussehra festive cluster temporarily slowed recruitment momentum, according to the Naukri JobSpeak Index report.

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

While the festive season led to a broad-based slowdown, sectors such as Accounting and Finance (15 per cent), Education (13 per cent), and BPO/ITES (6 per cent) defied the trend with positive growth, it stated.

The growth in hiring in the education sector was propelled by fresher and startup hiring and this momentum was geographically widespread, with major contributions from Hyderabad (47 per cent), Chennai (34 per cent), and Bengaluru (31 per cent), it added.

The demand for professionals in AI/ML roles also continued its unabated climb, with a significant 33 per cent year-on-year increase in hiring, said the report.

However, other sectors, including bellwether IT (15 per cent) and banking (24 per cent), witnessed a contraction in hiring activity during the month, it said.

The hiring data for the IT sector revealed that the emerging technologies sub-sector, which includes companies working on blockchain and cryptocurrency, registered a 60 per cent year-on-year growth, showcasing sustained investment in future-forward skills.

Further, the report revealed that hiring activity within IT unicorns remained stable this month, demonstrating considerably more resilience than IT hiring in Foreign MNCs (14 per cent) and global capability centres (15 per cent).

The report also found that the demand for niche and high-skill talent continued to intensify, with several specialised roles posting exceptional growth.

Hiring for Machine Learning Engineers led this trend with a massive 139 per cent surge, underscoring the critical importance of AI expertise across industries, it said.

Other specialised roles that saw a significant increase in demand include search engineers (62 per cent), medical biller/coders (41 per cent), transition managers (35 per cent), and manufacturing engineers (32 per cent).

"The moderation in October hiring was expected, given the clustering of major festive holidays like Diwali and Dussehra in the same month. It's encouraging to see Education and BPO sectors sustain their growth momentum alongside continued demand for specialised, high-skill roles," Naukri Chief Business Officer Dr Pawan Goyal added.