White collar hiring in India saw a 6% year-on-year decline in August following cautious sentiment in IT, insurance, auto, healthcare and BPO (business processing outsourcing) sectors, according to the latest Naukri JobSpeak Index and the Press Trust of India.

In August 2023 there were 2,666 job postings, compared to 2,828 job postings in the year-ago period.

On a sequential basis, hiring went up by 4% in August 2023, against 2,573 job postings in July 2023, according to the Index.

Naukri.com chief business officer Pawan Goyal said, “Jobspeak Index for August 2023, reveals optimistic hiring sentiments being driven by non-IT sectors such as oil and gas, hospitality, and pharma.”

Goyal continued, "The IT sector also showed positive signs, registering sequential hiring growth after declining for the past few months. This is a healthy indication of normalcy trends returning to white-collar job market in India.”

New jobs created in the IT industry were 33% lower compared to the high base value in August last year, the Index found.

Besides IT, sectors such as insurance, auto, healthcare, and BPO, also showed cautious hiring sentiments with a dip of 19%, 14%, 12%, and 10%, respectively, in new job creation compared to August last year, the Index added.

Meanwhile, the oil and gas sector continued its upward trend with 17% growth in hiring compared to August last year. The job growth for this sector is highest in the cities of Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Chennai, and Hyderabad.

The hospitality sector continued to hire aggressively and witnessed 14% growth in new jobs created compared to August last year.

Driven by a renewed focus on R&D, the pharmaceutical sector witnessed a 12% growth in hiring compared to August last year, particularly strong in cities like Ahmedabad and Chennai.

Naukri also showed that the number of open job vacancies related to AI functions increased sequentially in August by 8%. The steepest jump was witnessed for ML (machine learning) engineers and full stack AI scientists, respectively, followed by other roles including data scientists and data analysts.