AI Jobs in India Surge Past Losses by 51,000, Nomura Report Shows Shift to Two-Tier Market

AI is creating more jobs than it cuts in India

The story of 2026 has been AI coming for jobs. A new Nomura study of Asia complicates it: in India, the hiring driven by AI is running well ahead of the firing, at least for now. India is the world's back office, and that makes it "ground zero" for measuring what AI does to work. Nomura economists Sonal Varma and Si Ying Toh set out the case in a report covered by Bloomberg. Its sheer scale means it feels the "largest absolute impact" across layoffs, hiring freezes and recruitment. And the recruitment is winning. In India, the bank counted 83,100 AI-related hires between 2022 and this month, against 31,921 layoffs and attrition, more than two hires for every job lost. Across Asia the gap is wider still: 130,758 AI-related jobs added, over 90% of them in technology, versus 60,654 lost, around 60% of those in financial services, Business Today reported. The catch beneath the headline The finding, the economists wrote, "runs counter to the narrative of massive job losses due to growing AI adoption". At least in the early stages, job creation is more than offsetting displacement. They see the same pattern in China and in the Philippines, where outsourcing anchors the labour market. But the net number hides a harsh swap. The people let go are mostly support teams replaced by chatbots. The people hired are mostly IT-services graduates that firms credit directly to AI demand. "Since displaced workers rarely transition to AI engineering roles," the economists warned, "the aggregates do mask distributional pain." A two-tier market That is the real shift. In India and Korea, AI is carving a two-tier labour market, thinning demand for entry-level workers while lifting it for experienced staff who grasp the business. The junior rung, long the on-ramp into India's IT industry, is the one being pulled away. It is a more hopeful reading than the white-collar cuts landing elsewhere, and it arrives as money keeps pouring into India's AI build-out. Optimists such as Nvidia's Jensen Huang have dismissed the jobs-doom talk for a while. The Nomura data hands them a number to point to. The caveats are real. The study rests on 69 anecdotes drawn from news reports, not payroll records, in a labour market Nomura calls fragmented. It is a snapshot of a fast-moving early phase, not a verdict. For now, in the one country watching this most closely, AI is adding more jobs than it takes. Whether that holds is the question India cannot yet answer.

AI-linked hiring in India outpaces job losses by over 51,000: Nomura

Artificial intelligence is creating more jobs than it is eliminating in India. This technology has resulted in a net positive employment impact for the nation. However, AI is disrupting traditional roles and reducing demand for entry-level workers. Companies are showing weaker demand for junior employees while senior roles remain stronger. New Delhi: Artificial intelligence (AI) is creating more jobs than it is eliminating in India, with AI-related hiring reaching 83,100 compared with 31,921 documented layoffs and attrition, according to a Nomura report. The findings indicate a net positive employment impact of AI in India so far, even as the technology disrupts traditional roles and reduces demand for entry-level workers. In its Asia Economic Monthly report, Nomura said India was experiencing the largest absolute impact from AI among the Asian economies covered by its analysis, both in terms of documented layoffs and hiring. The report said India's large population and its position as a global back-office hub have made the country a key market for assessing AI's impact on employment. "We find that India is experiencing the largest absolute impact from AI across both documented layoffs/hiring freezes and AI hiring," Nomura said, adding that "so far, the net impact is also positive for India." Nomura's data showed that India accounted for 83,100 of the roughly 1.31 lakh AI-related jobs created across the Asian economies in its database. In comparison, it identified 31,921 AI-related layoffs and attrition in India, the highest among the countries surveyed. While overall hiring has exceeded job losses, the gains have not been evenly distributed across workers. Nomura noted AI was creating a two-tiered labour market, with companies showing weaker demand for entry-level employees while demand for experienced and senior workers remained relatively stronger. Citing an ICRIER survey of 651 firms in India's IT sector, the report said 55 per cent of companies reported a decline in entry-level hiring, compared with 25 per cent reporting a decline in mid-level hiring and 14 per cent in senior-level recruitment. The shift comes as companies increasingly automate routine work typically handled by junior employees. Nomura identified banking back-office operations, customer service and junior technical roles such as quality assurance testing and coding among the jobs being displaced by AI. The impact is also showing up through slower recruitment rather than outright layoffs. Nomura cited staffing firm Xpheno's estimate that net hiring by Indian IT companies fell to 140,000 in FY26 from 600,000 in FY22 as companies reduced campus recruitment instead of terminating existing employees. At the same time, most new AI-related jobs remain concentrated in technology. Nomura said more than 90 per cent of AI-related job creation in its Asian sample came from the technology sector, while hiring in India was mainly for AI data annotation and linguistics work. Nomura said the early evidence runs counter to fears that AI adoption would result primarily in large-scale job destruction, but cautioned that the technology was still at an early stage and its full labour-market impact could take years to emerge. "We are positively surprised by our aggregate result showing that AI has been a net positive for jobs," the report said, while noting that there were "many disruptions beneath the surface."