The slowdown in jobs in the Information Technology industry has been a concern for many. But Nasscom (National Association of Software and Services Companies) sees a positive trend in hiring for technology jobs. The association sees an addition of up to 20 lakh IT jobs in the next seven years.
Besides, it also sees a new window of opportunity for technology jobs in sectors other than the traditional IT industry.
“More jobs are being created in technology outside of the IT sector. Sectors such as healthcare, infrastructure, retail and agriculture are now hiring people for their technology tasks,” Nasscom President R Chandrashekhar told
The industry, whose intake has come down in the past two years, is projected to absorb “about 10-20 lakh people from now and 2025, despite all that is happening in the sector,” he said.
While admitting that there had been a decline in hiring by the IT industry in the past two years, he pointed out that automation happened much faster than what was anticipated by the industry.
“We had anticipated that even the IT industry will be impacted by the technology disruption. The rate of creation of jobs has been coming down in the past 10 years. Several companies have either minimised or eliminated their bench strengths in the last 1-2 -two years.
“More and more jobs in coding and call centres are being automated. Even in the service space, some tasks are getting automated. As a result of all these, jobs in the lower end are disappearing,” he said.
On the other hand, the demand for highly skilled professionals is going up. “They need to acquire additional skills to get these jobs. The number of such jobs being created may not be as many as that are getting eliminated,” Chandrashekhar added.
Domestic industry
He said the domestic component of IT revenues has been disappointing for years. But there’s a huge scope for growth in the space.
“It is far lower than its potential. Even now, it is very low than what it should be. But it is growing faster than our exports. It grew 10 per cent last year as against the growth rate of 8 per cent in exports.
“We expect it could be more and witness dramatic raise, considering the demand in the local market.”