White-collar hiring in India fell by 16% in December 2023 when compared to December 2022, according to the latest Naukri JobSpeak Index.

The Index stood at 2,439 for December 2023, up 2% compared to November 2023.

India’s travel and hospitality sector continued its growth momentum in new job offers with a 4% increase in hiring as compared to December 2022. This was followed by pharma/biotech/clinical research (+2%).

On the other hand, white-collar hiring fell by 25% in the telecom/ISP sector.

By city, the non-metros outshined the metros in terms of hiring in December 2023. Vadodara registered a growth of 3% in new job offers in December 2023 when compared to December 2022.

The 3% growth is noticeably better than the metros where Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune and Kolkata registered declines of 24%, 23%, 23%, 17% and 16%, respectively, in new job offers.

Senior professionals continued to be in demand in December 2023, in line with the trend seen in most of 2023.

Hiring for professionals boasting of over 16 years of experience witnessed 8% jump in hiring in December 2023 over the same month of 2022. However, job offers for professionals falling in the experience categories of 13-16 years, 8-12 years, and of 4-7 years corrected by 2%, 12%, and 23% respectively.

For freshers, new offers recorded a decline of 16% in the latest month over the same month of 2022.

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.