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Freshly graduated engineers may find a dearth of IT jobs this fiscal year with the Indian IT industry expected to recruit 1.55 lakh new graduates this year against 3 lakh in a good year.
According to data sourced by businessline from the staffing services firm Teamlease, fresher hiring for FY24 will be the lowest in three years after two back-to-back years of healthy recruitment numbers during the pandemic years.
In FY22, in particular, the Indian IT players recruited 3.9 lakh new graduates — almost 26 per cent of outgoing engineering class of 2022 — to execute the deals in digital transformation that were bagged by the IT sector during lockdown. Hiring levelled out to 2.8 lakh in FY23.
Also read: Slow hiring for Indian IT sector continues for Q1FY24
Impact of US recession
However, the likely recession in the United States is stalling the execution of existing projects for IT firms, and without new projects, the Indian IT sector does not need to recruit new engineers at the rates they did before.
| Fiscal Year | Total Engineering Passouts (lakhs) | Hired (lakhs) | Placements (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY20 | 15 | 2.8 | 19% |
| FY21 | 15 | 0.9 | 6% |
| FY22 | 15 | 3.9 | 26% |
| FY23 | 15 | 2.3 | 15% |
| FY24 | 15 | 1.55 | 10% |
The commentary for FY24, now that the results for the first quarter of this fiscal are out, worryingly points towards depleted recruitment numbers. Terms such as “utilisation of existing bench strength” and “upskilling” are being thrown around by IT firms during their financial commentary.
IT leaders also firmly believe that the fast-approaching AI transformation will not impact the jobs of the newly recruited engineers, but the numbers suggest otherwise. This year, the top 5 IT firms are projected to hire less than 10 per cent of the graduating class. Although this number might still appear substantial – it is nearly half of the number of new engineers that this sector recruits normally.
Companies like TCS, Infosys, Wipro are beloved nationwide as they provide reliably good jobs to a large section of the outgoing engineering graduates every year. This year, these IT firms are indicating that things will not be as rosy for young engineers. TCS has already delayed onboarding new recruits by three months recently.
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