While-collar hiring in India continues to be at a fast clip, with March figures being a solid 38% higher on year, with big support from the manufacturing sector (up 78% on year and 12% on month). Over the six months to March, such hiring across sectors grew 23%, revealed foundit Insights Tracker.
The growth has however slowed a bit after steady acceleration in the final months of 2024, with the last three months showing a lower growth of 10%. March hiring, to be sure, was the same as in February.
The agency noted that India is “well-positioned to become a preferred hub for manufacturing and assembly,” as global firms adopt “China Plus One” strategy with the (hefty) tariffs being imposed by the US on China.
In the manufacturing sector, the survey noted key demand in engineering, quality control ad production roles in March. With the government incentives for MSMEs, Tier-2 cities like Vadodara and Kochi witnessed brisk hiring in March with month-on-month growth of 4% and 3% respectively.
Among sectors, after manufacturing, the most job-creating sectors in Marxch were healthcare and pharma (62% on year), BFSI (57%), logistics and transporartion (46%), and real estate (55%).”India’s manufacturing and export sectors are expanding workforce capacity to support new demand patterns. With tariff re-alignments, global businesses are expected to explore Indian manufacturing hubs, creating demand for production managers, quality assurance engineers, supply chain analysts, and robotics and automation specialists.”
As for the information technology sector, the survey observed that MNCs are expanding their global capability centres in India. “The biggets beneficiatry has been the IT software and services sector, which (In March) grew 43% y-o-y and 8% month on month.”
Top skills drivinf demand are cloud computing (17%0, AI/ML (15%0, data science (13%) and cybersecurity (11%).
“India is no longer just a talent hub, but a critical growth engine for global enterprises. The marked uptick in hiring across manufacturing, IT, and supply chain functions underscores the country’s readiness to lead in a realigned world order,” said V. Suresh, CEO at foundit.
Experts said that India’s importance in the global value chain is going to grow as it is likely that Indian exporters may have to deal with lower reciprocal tariffs as compared to large manufacturing hubs like China, and even countries like Vietnam.
On April 2, Trump administration announced a baseline 10% tariffs on all countries with some regions like China and India being subjected to higher tariffs. Reciprocal tariffs are put in abeyance for 90 days from roughly a fortnight ago.