White-collar hiring dips 9% in October as festive holidays slow recruitment

India’s white-collar job market saw a temporary dip in October as festive holidays slowed hiring activity across most sectors, according to Naukri JobSpeak Index data released on Monday.

The index stood at 2,480 points, reflecting a 9% year-on-year decline. However, after adjusting for the Diwali–Dussehra holiday effect, underlying growth was estimated at 3%, suggesting steady momentum at the start of the third quarter.

Pawan Goyal, chief business officer at Naukri, said the October moderation was “expected given the clustering of major festive holidays like Diwali and Dussehra in the same month.” The 3% underlying growth points to a stable hiring outlook led by education, BPO and specialised high-skill roles, he said.

While the slowdown was broad-based, the accounting and finance (+15%), education (+13%) and BPO/ITeS (+6%) sectors continued to post growth. In contrast, IT (-15%) and banking (-24%) saw contractions.

The education sector emerged as a bright spot, with hiring up 13%, led by fresher recruitment (+25%) and startup hiring (+77%). The uptick was most pronounced in Hyderabad (+47%), Chennai (+34%), and Bengaluru (+31%).

Despite the overall contraction, within IT, companies in emerging technologies such as blockchain and cryptocurrency recorded 60% growth, while hiring in IT unicorns remained steady.

Demand for specialised skills continued to rise, with machine learning engineer roles up 139% year-on-year, followed by search engineers (+62%), medical billers/coders (+41%) and manufacturing engineers (+32%).

The BPO/ITeS sector maintained a 6% growth, driven largely by entry-level hiring (+20%), particularly in Coimbatore (+33%), Chennai (+29%) and Bengaluru (+17%).