White collar job openings dip in June amid slowing tech intake

India’s white collar job market recorded a drop in active vacancies month on month in June due to a slowdown in hiring velocity in the IT industry collective of services, products, internet-enabled sectors, and startups.

The overall drop in hiring numbers comes even as non-tech sectors continued to open more job positions amid rising attrition and an uptick in consumption, data put together exclusively for ET by specialist staffing firm Xpheno showed. The total number of active white collar job openings in June stood at 300,000, down from 330,000 in May, according to data collated from LinkedIn and several company job boards. This is the third month in a row that the IT sector as a whole recorded a fall in hiring numbers – it dropped 12% month on month in June, 8% in May, and 4% in April.

Hiring in the startups space, hit by a funding slowdown, fell a massive 30% in the month in June. Banking and financial services sector, too, saw active openings drop by 29% in June from a month ago. However, non-tech sectors collectively put out 12% more jobs than the count in May, contributing 25% of the overall vacancies in June.

Sectors like hospitality and tourism, manufacturing, healthcare, automotive, oil and energy, media and advertising, telecom, and logistics and supply chain have all put out more jobs in June.

Experts attribute the moderation in hiring numbers to a wait-and-watch approach in technology, startups, and allied sectors even as consumption spikes, increasing mobility, rising attrition, and anticipated festive demand in coming months are expected to keep the hiring funnel active in non-tech segments.

“Global investor sentiment is known to cause ripples in the Indian tech ecosystem due to the export services model that the sector primarily runs on,” said Anil Ethanur, cofounder at Xpheno. “Further, the impact of the funding winter has reached the Indian startup ecosystem.”

A sense of cautious optimism is also seen emerging in the hiring plans of captive units and global in-house centres (GICs) as they wait for the funding crisis to end and global sentiments around inflation and rising cost of money to stabilise.

The IT sector’s contribution to overall active white collar openings dropped to 67% – the lowest contribution that the sector has recorded in the last 30 months – in June as against the over 80% range it has maintained over the year.

“Tech sector executives are cautiously optimistic about the future,” said Nitin Bhatt, technology sector leader at EY India. “Although there is little doubt that digital and cloud will continue to drive long-term demand for technology products and services, business leaders are preparing for a volatile macroeconomic environment over the next several quarters. Technology companies need to urgently take a relook at their talent supply chain processes and make them resilient to demand volatility,” ..