Making informed career choices is a crucial aspect of growing professionally, as it can be the first step toward landing your dream job. While finding the right job is crucial for everyone, it can also be quite nerve-wracking, making it important for all job seekers to understand the current hiring trends.

To help you with this, Naukri has released the JobSpeak report, a monthly index that calculates and records month-on-month hiring activity based on the job listings on the website.

This report measures the hiring trends across industries, cities, functional areas, and experience levels. In this blog, we take a closer look at the market hiring trends with the October 2023 edition of the Naukri JobSpeak Report.

Oil & Gas, Pharma and Banking lead the way in job creation in Oct 2023: Naukri JobSpeak

Naukri JobSpeak Index, the authoritative measure of white-collar hiring in India, stood at 2484 in October 2023, flattish over 2455 recorded in October 2022.

A broad range of sectors recorded positive job creation due to the low base effect last year (due to Diwali being in October 2022).

The sectors with the highest job growth included Oil & gas, Pharma/Biotech, and Banking/Financial Services, followed by Healthcare, Auto and Hospitality.

Pawan Goyal, Chief Business Officer, Naukri said,

Positive job growth numbers across a wide range of sectors excluding IT continue to augur well for the diversification of job market to non-IT sectors of India. The reported job growth numbers are however also benefiting from the low base effect of last year’s festival season in October and may moderate in the coming month.

Oil & Gas witnessed the highest growth among all major sectors, jumping by 24% compared to October 2022.

Driven by new projects of domestic and global energy giants, the growth was highest in the cities of Ahmedabad, Delhi NCR, and Pune.

Roles such as Maintenance Engineer, Industrial Engineer, and Maintenance Head were in highest demand, especially for 16+ years of experience.

The Pharma/Biotech sector saw the second-highest growth with a 19% increase in new jobs compared to October 2022.

Driven by a rapid increase in Pharma R&D, the demand was highest for Clinical Research Assistants, and Lab Technicians.

The demand is highest in the cities of Vadodara, Ahmedabad, and Coimbatore, as well as for experienced professionals with more than 16 years of experience.

Banking and Financial Services sector continued its bull run and registered a yearly growth of 13% in October 2023 compared to last year.

Opening of new branches by the major banks and small-finance banks led to a significant increase in demand for Branch Managers, Business Development Managers, and Accounts Executives.

Among the sub-sectors, NBFC and Fintech/Payments sector jobs grew by 40% and 27% respectively, while jobs in Banking, Financial Services, and Investment Banking/Venture Capital/Private Equity registered a jump of 10%, 6%, and 3% respectively.

Job growth scenario in metros showed mixed trends in October 2023. While Delhi NCR and Mumbai clocked 5% and 4% growth in new job offers, Kolkata and IT-focused metros such as Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, and Chennai saw de-growth of 6-11%.

Among the new hubs of job creation, Vadodara, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, and Chandigarh witnessed increase in hiring of 37%, 22%, 10%, and 5%, respectively. Jobs in IT-focused cities of Cochin and Coimbatore continue a negative growth, of 18% and 7% respectively.

The job market has shown preferences for experienced professionals in the latest month.

The hiring for professionals with more than 16 years of experience jumped about 29% in September 2023 over September 2022.

The hiring numbers for professionals with 13-16 years of experience increased by 11%.

The new job offers for professionals with 8-12 years of experience and for people with 4-7 years of experience contracted by 2% and 19% respectively.

The hiring for freshers decreased by 10% in September 2023.

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 on Naukri.

The JobSpeak Index captures hiring activity across multiple dimensions, including industries, cities, functional areas, and experience bands. July 2008 is taken as 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 a long period of time, 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.

Conclusion

Naukri JobSpeak Index, the authoritative measure of white-collar hiring in India, stood at 2484 in October 2023, flattish over 2455 recorded in October 2022.

A broad range of sectors recorded positive job creation due to the low base effect last year (due to Diwali being in October 2022).

The sectors with the highest job growth included Oil & Gas, Pharma/Biotech, and Banking/Financial Services, followed by Healthcare, Auto and Hospitality.

Oil & Gas, Pharma & Banking sectors lead the charge in new job creation. Pharma/Biotech sector saw the second highest growth with a 19% increase in new jobs compared to October 2022.

Metros throw up mixed numbers, while non-metros continue to grow. Among the new hubs of job creation, Vadodara, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, and Chandigarh witnessed increase in hiring of 37%, 22%, 10% and 5%, respectively.

Jobs in IT-focused cities of Cochin and Coimbatore continue a negative growth, of 18% and 7% respectively.

Naukri JobSpeak