India's White-Collar Job Market Grows 4% in February, Driven by AI and Hospitality Sectors

White-collar job market sees 4 pc growth in Feb: Report

Mumbai's white-collar job market grew by 4% in February 2025, led by AI-ML and hospitality sectors, according to the Naukri JobSpeak Index. Real estate, FMCG, and pharma sectors also showed positive performance. Emerging IT cities like Jaipur and Coimbatore posted significant growth. Fresher hiring remained flat overall, but hospitality and telecom sectors saw notable increases.Mumbai, The Indian white-collar job market maintained its growth momentum in February this year, recording a 4 per cent year-on-year increase, mainly led by recruitments in the Artificial Intelligence (AI-ML) and hospitality sectors, a report said on Monday. The job market has begun the new year on a positive note, reporting positive growth in both January and February. "Moreover, considering that February last year saw an 8 per cent de-growth, it looks even more promising this year around. While AI/ML hiring continues its buoyant trend, it is also encouraging to see sectors like Hospitality driving growth," Naukri Chief Business Officer Pawan Goyal said, quoting the Naukri JobSpeak Index report. The Naukri JobSpeak is a monthly Index that tracks Indian job market trends and hiring activity based on new job listings and recruiter searches on Naukri.com's resume database. Further, the report revealed that the other sectors which demonstrated positive performance in February include real estate (9 per cent), with FMCG (8 per cent), pharma (5 per cent), and GCC (2 per cent), while banking continued to decline at 6 per cent. While IT hiring remained flat at an overall level, the sector showed signs of improvement considering the steep decline it witnessed throughout 2024, the report noted. Emerging IT cities like Jaipur (19 per cent) and Coimbatore (10 per cent) posted strong growth in IT hiring and bucked the trends. Meanwhile, the report found that overall, fresher hiring remained flattish in February 2025. However, the hospitality and telecom sectors witnessed a 23 per cent and 11 per cent growth in fresher recruitment, respectively, it added.

India's white-collar job market sees 4% growth in February

India's white-collar job market grew by 4% in February, propelled by strong hiring in AI, hospitality, and real estate sectors. AI-ML recorded a 21% rise, hospitality 20%, and real estate 9%. IT hiring showed recovery in emerging centers like Jaipur and Coimbatore. In-demand roles included data scientists and machine learning engineers, with significant increases in senior professional hiring.With artificial intelligence (AI), hospitality and real estate driving hiring momentum, India's white-collar job market posted a steady 4% year-on-year growth in February, according to the latest Naukri JobSpeak Index released on Monday. The index stood at 2,890 points, reflecting an improving employment landscape, especially in sectors that struggled in 2024. "AI/ML hiring continues its buoyant trend; it is also encouraging to see sectors like hospitality and real estate driving growth," said Pawan Goyal, chief business officer at Naukri. The AI-ML sector saw a 21% rise in hiring, while the hospitality industry rebounded strongly with a 20% year-on-year increase, reversing last February's 3% decline. Real estate hiring increased 9%, underscoring a broad recovery in key industries. However, the job market showed a mixed picture for core sectors. FMCG (+8%), pharma (+5%) and global capability centres (+2%) saw modest gains, but banking hiring declined 6%. Meanwhile, IT hiring remained flat overall but showed signs of recovery, particularly in emerging centres such as Jaipur (+19%) and Coimbatore (+10%). Although the overall retail sector witnessed a 4% decline, certain sub-sectors showed strong growth. Consumer durables (+25%), garments and accessories (+15%), and beauty and wellness (+13%) posted advances, notably in fresher hiring. The surge in hiring extended to specialised tech roles, with data scientists (+76%) and machine learning engineers (+70%) seeing the highest growth. Other high-demand roles included search engineers (+52%) and security consultants (+44%). Fresh graduate hiring remained mostly stable, but the hospitality and telecom sectors stood out with 23% and 11% increases, respectively. Senior professionals with over 16 years of experience also saw a hiring uptick (+15%), with high-salary roles (Rs 20 lakh per annum-plus) witnessing a 21% jump. "The job market has begun the year on a positive note, showing growth in both January and February," Goyal said, emphasising the significance of the turnaround after last year's hiring slowdown.