India's white-collar job market recorded the strongest active job count in the past two years this January, reports The Economic Times citing data from staffing firm Xpheno and LinkedIn. January 2022 clocked 325,000 active white collar job openings. The increase in job openings came despite several organisations having put a temporary hold on their return to work plans. Yet, business and hiring action remained unaffected. The numbers had nosedived to their lowest of around 130,000 vacancies in June-July 2020. The number of vacancies in January was 23% higher than the same month a year ago.

Top officials from companies including RPG Group, Mahindra & Mahindra, Bank of Baroda, Motilal Os- wal Financial Services, among others, said the rise in the number of vacancies reflects resilience of the job market as companies are bullish about the next financial year amid rising vaccination coverage, robust economic indicators, and a strong belief about the preparedness to fight future Covid waves. "Hiring intent of the formal workforce sector is at its highest point, in-line with the upbeat market we kicked off 2022 with," said Kamal Karanth, co-founder of Xpheno. "India Inc is in for another big hiring year and action will only get higher as schemes like PLI (production linked incentive) generate more jobs across key sectors," he added. While the technology sector recorded its highest talent demand in over 20 months, other sectors also showed apick-up in hiring momentum including BFSI, healthcare & pharma, automotive, manufacturing, retail, education, telecom, among others.