Jobs market outlook 2023: Specialised IT, telecom and service-oriented sectors to drive hiring

• The festive-season momentum of increased hiring in retail, e-commerce, and BFSI sectors will likely spill over into 2023.
  
• A similar trend is expected in the services-oriented industries of hospitality, and airline sectors as people continue to travel more to make up for the Covid-time isolation.
  
• A survey by Randstad says that hiring in the Indian IT sector is likely to rise in the first quarter of 2023 as seven out of 10 companies plan to increase their headcount in the period.
  
• Data science, analytics, and other technology-related job roles are likely to continue to be in demand in the new year.

Specialised IT, telecom and service-oriented jobs will be on the upswing in 2023 as increased digitalisation, 5G expansion and a claw back by service sectors to pre-Covid levels of growth — will necessitate increased hiring in these sectors.Also, the momentum from the festive season-driven hiring growth in retail, e-commerce and BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance) sectors witnessed in the last quarter of 2022 will likely spill over into the next year, industry players say.

High-skilled IT jobs, telecom sector to drive growth

Despite the large-scale job cuts and hiring freeze affected by global technology players, the Indian IT sector is likely to defy the global trends and see hiring next year – especially for specialised digital skills.

A survey by staffing and recruiting services firm Randstad says that hiring in the Indian IT sector is likely to pick up in the first quarter of 2023 as seven out of 10 companies plan to increase their headcount during the period.

And the country’s big push for 5G expansion in 2023 will see a surge in hiring in the telecom sector as well.

“Sectors such as IT, healthcare, e-commerce will continue to grow and with the advent of 5G, we will see a sharp rise in telcom jobs as well in the next few quarters. With the rising job market and ever-evolving concept of job, it will be interesting to see how India defines the future of work,” Sashi Kumar, head of sales at Indeed India, told Business Insider India.

To be sure, the hiring pace in the Indian IT sector slowed down this year and this was particularly seen in the case of freshers. However, experts say that the demand for IT digital skills like SAP, salesforce developers, dot net, data analytics, java, full stack, devOps, and cloud infra will continue to remain strong in 2023.

“We do see an upswing in demand for digital skills as the services sector continues to hire,” Nitin Dave, CEO – Quess Staffing Solutions told Business Insider India.

According to a recent Indeed survey, around 71% of companies recruited people with IT abilities and skills this year. Data science, analytics, and other technology-related job roles are likely to continue to be in demand next year as well, according to Kumar of Indeed India.

“High-skilled engineering employees who have prowess for futuristic tech are in demand and they have multiple opportunities, hence we see that employability is positive,” Kumar added.

Crypto roles - which had the biggest share of hires in overall technology job roles, increasing from 41.22% in 2019-20 to 67.48% in 2021-22 – will continue its upward growth with high demand for application developers, data engineers and full-stack developers.

Another big source of demand for human resources will be from global capability centres (GCCs). “We also expect to see an increase in job demand from the growing number of GCCs in India,” Dave added. GCCs will create over 3.64 lakh new jobs over the next 12 months, a 38% rise from last year, according to a report by staffing firm NLB Services.

Tier 1 cities to dominate IT hiring, Tier 2,3 will also join the party

Bengaluru will continue to lead in hiring of IT professionals. As per Quess data, the overall tech hiring is expected to be dominated by Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities like Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai, Pune, NCR, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Jaipur and others.

“We are seeing a positive growth of product and engineering roles in India, which will grow exponentially in the coming years. As a result of the pandemic’s digital push, there is a rise in jobs in engineering and R&D being made available in Tier 2 and 3 cities as well,” Kumar said.

Cities like Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Kochi, Indore, Jaipur, Surat and others are expected to contribute over 6.5% of total R&D jobs in 2023, according to data by Indeed.

Jobs in the services industry on the upswing

Hospitality industry will be a key employer as people have started travelling again with a vengeance and this trend is not likely to slow down despite high inflation and interest rates, industry players added.

“We are also optimistic that the hospitality, aviation and retail sectors will soon return to pre-pandemic levels,” said Dave.

The aviation industry – one of the most affected industries due to the pandemic lockdowns – had to cut 10% or 19,200 jobs between April 2020 and December 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, VK Singh, Minister of State for Civil Aviation said in March this year. However, the ministry in August said the Indian aviation industry would employ over 1 lakh people in the next two years.

A growing regulatory push for ESG (environment, social and governance) compliance will drive demand for professionals in this space next year. “We are also seeing more roles in the sustainability and ESG space ranging from engineers, and research analysts to consultants,” Kumar said.

Besides growth in regular jobs, gig jobs in the retail and e-commerce sectors – which saw a steep growth this year – will continue to rise in 2023, experts say. As per Indeed, 9 million gig workers will be added to the Indian workforce in the next three years.

“Companies have also begun to invest in platforms and procedures for gig labour, underscoring how crucial they are to India's future job growth,” said Kumar.

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