AI roles, Healthcare & senior professionals emerge as favourites in the job market in Jan 2024: Naukri JobSpeak

Naukri JobSpeak Index, the most comprehensive measure of white-collar hiring in India, stood at 2455 in January 2024, registering an increase of 1% over the preceding month and about 11% lower than last year. Healthcare, Hospitality and FMCG are the major sectors that witnessed year-on-year (yoy) job growth in January 2024 in an otherwise cautious market. Senior professionals and premium jobseekers were in the highest demand. New jobs in AI increased by 12% in January 2024 vs last year.

Full stack AI scientists in heavy demand

Hiring for niche AI related roles such as Machine Learning Engineer and Full Stack AI Scientist jumped yoy by a staggering 46% and 23%, respectively. Conventional AI roles such as Data Scientist were also in good demand. This is in contrast to a modest 1% growth in overall IT jobs in January 2024 compared to the preceding month. On a yoy basis, the overall hiring in IT sector is 19% lower than the boom times of January 2023.

Healthcare, Hospitality and FMCG sectors in top gear

Hiring in Healthcare sector increased by 7% yoy in January 2024 with maximum increase in demand for administrative roles. Hiring in the travel and hospitality sector recorded a growth of 5% yoy. With the ongoing boom in both domestic and international tourism, demand for Restaurant Managers and Service Managers remained at elevated levels. Hiring in this sector was particularly high in the cities of Bangalore and Mumbai.

New job offers in the FMCG witnessed an increase of 5% in January this year as compared to the same month of 2023. Uptick in demand in rural areas, aided by marketing push by FMCG players, led to positive momentum in the hiring trends in the sector. Some job roles that witnessed highest demand in the FMCG sector included Assembly Line Operator, Factory Head, Production Engineer and Production Manager. Kolkata and Pune topped the cities that offered new jobs in the sector in January 2024.

The major sectors that witnessed degrowth in hiring included BPO and Insurance, which saw a decline of 16% and 8% respectively. Further, Education and Retail sectors saw yoy contraction of 7% each.

Senior Professionals, Higher Salaries make a splash

Senior professionals with more than 16 years of experience witnessed maximum positive momentum in job offers. The hiring for this experience segment went up by a staggering 19% in the latest month as compared to the corresponding month last year. New job offers for professionals falling in experience category of 13-16 years went up by almost 2%. However, for professionals falling in the experience categories of 8-12 years, 4-7 years and for freshers, the new jobs created were lower by 18%, 7% and 10%, respectively, compared to January 2023. At the same time, job offers in the salary range of more than 20 lakhs per annum went up by 18%. New jobs in the salary range of 13-20 lakhs per annum saw marginal contraction of 1%, while new job openings in salaries less than 12 lakhs witnessed degrowth.

Dr. Pawan Goyal, Chief Business Officer of Naukri.com, comments, “The significant rise in AI related jobs is indicative of the changing skill requirements in the IT sector, while the positive hiring sentiment in Healthcare, Hospitality and FMCG reflect a strong domestic economy”.

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Methodology

The Naukri JobSpeak is a monthly Index representing the state of the Indian job market & hiring activity based on new job listings and job-related searches* by recruiters on the resume database of Naukri.com. The JobSpeak Index captures hiring activity across multiple dimensions, including industries, cities, functional areas, and experience bands. July 2008 is the base month with an index value of 1,000, and the subsequent monthly index values are compared with the data for July 2008. The Index is a highly robust and reliable indicator of white-collar hiring in India. It is aggregated based on the hiring activity of over 100,000 clients with over 70 Lakh new job mandates yearly. The report does not cover gig employment, hyperlocal hiring, or campus placement. Over an extended period, JobSpeak could be impacted by factors like internet penetration and Naukri’s market share.

*Index now includes job-related searches on Naukri’s resume database, which helps generate statistically significant data at a more granular level.

About Naukri.com

Naukri.com, India’s No. 1 job site and the flagship brand of Info Edge introduced the concept of e-recruitment in India. Since its inception in 1997, Naukri.com has continuously grown while outperforming its competitors in every sphere. Info Edge was the first internet company to be listed in India. As the market leader, the brand has enjoyed the highest awareness and market share amongst job seekers and recruiters for over two decades. It has become synonymous with the jobs category. The platform has over 1 Crore active app installs and receives over 3 Million job applications daily. It provides hiring-related services to corporates, recruiters, placement agencies, and job seekers in India & overseas. It offers multiple products like Resume Database Access, listings, Branding, and response management tools. With more than 70 lakh new job mandates every year and over 9 Crore jobseekers, the brand serves over 100,000 unique clients through its 63 offices in 56 cities in India.