White-collar hiring activity rises 10% in October, driven by oil & gas, pharma, and FMCG sectors: Report

White collar hiring activity witnessed a growth of 10% year-on-year in October mainly driven by a rise in recruitment in sectors, including oil and gas, pharmaceuticals, FMCG, and IT, a report said on Monday.

The Naukri JobSpeak Index, India’s leading indicator of white-collar hiring activity, demonstrated robust growth in October, reaching 2,733 points compared to 2,484 in the same month of 2023, marking a significant 10% year-on-year increase.

Key sectors, including oil & gas (18%), pharma/biotech (12%), FMCG (8%), and IT (6%) emerged as primary drivers of this positive trend, with AI/ML roles showing exceptional growth at 39% year-on-year, the report stated.

Hiring in the IT sector showed positive growth in four out of the seven months this financial year, auguring well for balance of year trends, added the report.

The Naukri JobSpeak is a monthly Index representing the state of 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.

The report further revealed that overall, global capability centres (GCCs) demonstrated consistent growth with a 17% year-on-year increase in October.

GCCs showed significant traction in emerging hubs like Kolkata (68.46%) and Ahmedabad (47.68%) indicating a growing preference among international companies to expand beyond traditional tech centres for their India operations, it added.

The festive period also witnessed a significant growth in data-focused positions — data/big data testing engineer (64%), full stack data scientist (46%), data platform engineer (26%) and data scientist (23%), it said.

The report also found that after a sluggish performance throughout 2024, hiring for freshers showed encouraging signs with a 6% year-on-year growth in October.

When it came to locations, southern states demonstrated exceptional growth in white-collar hiring, with multiple cities showing strong year-on-year gains, said the report.

Tamil Nadu emerged as the strongest performer with a 24% year-on-year growth, followed by Telangana (16%), Karnataka (12%), Andhra Pradesh (9%) and Kerala (7%), it stated.

“The accelerating pace of fresher hiring is a strong indicator of business confidence and presents exciting opportunities for upcoming graduates,” Naukri Chief Business Officer Pawan Goyal said.

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