Artificial Intelligence Boosts Overall Indian Jobs While Cutting Entry Hiring
New Delhi, Sunday, 23 August 2026.
While artificial intelligence creates more Asian jobs than it eliminates, Indian technology firms are severely cutting entry-level recruitment, shifting focus toward experienced professionals who can leverage AI tools.
Net Job Growth Masks Entry-Level Decline
While artificial intelligence creates more Asian jobs than it eliminates, Indian technology firms are severely cutting entry-level recruitment, shifting focus toward experienced professionals who can leverage AI tools. A comprehensive analysis by Nomura, covering the period from 2022 through 20 August 2026, indicates that AI-related hiring currently outpaces AI-related firings across the region [2]. The report details that 131,000 AI-related jobs were created against 61,000 jobs lost, resulting in a net positive impact for India, China, and the Philippines [2]. However, this aggregate growth obscures a divergent reality for new graduates entering the workforce. The Indian labor market is experiencing a K-shaped split where AI integration is reducing entry-level hiring, a trend confirmed by a survey of 651 Indian IT firms conducted by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations [1]. In this survey, 55% of companies reported a decline in entry-level hiring, compared to only 14% for senior-level roles [1]. This disparity highlights that the jobs being created by AI are not necessarily the jobs being lost to AI, creating a mismatch for young workers and fresh graduates [2].
Sector Concentration and Silent Firing
The contraction in early-career opportunities is driven by a phenomenon Nomura describes as silent firing, where firms utilize hiring freezes or reduced campus recruitment rather than executing mass layoffs [2]. Data from staffing firm Xpheno reveals that net hiring in India’s IT sector dropped significantly, falling from approximately 600,000 in FY22 to 140,000 in FY26 [1]. This reduction represents a substantial decrease in hiring volume, calculated as 76.667 percent drop in net hiring over the four-year period [1]. AI-related layoffs are heavily concentrated in specific sectors, with financial services accounting for 58% of documented job losses and the technology sector accounting for 30% [2]. Vulnerable roles include back-office functions such as reconciliation, compliance, and data entry, as well as customer service and entry-level coding positions [1]. Conversely, over 90% of AI-related job creation is concentrated in the technology sector, specifically in data annotation, linguistics, and AI-related IT services [2]. This concentration suggests that while the tech sector is generating new roles, the barrier to entry has risen sharply, requiring domain expertise that fresh graduates often lack [1].
Global Context and Future Workforce Redesign
The transformation in India mirrors broader global shifts where AI and machine-learning skills are becoming prerequisites for employment. In the United States, AI and machine-learning skills were linked to 79% of US tech job postings by July 2026, indicating a global premium on specialized technical competency [3]. Meanwhile, industry leaders warn that the nature of work itself is undergoing fundamental changes. At the ET WLF 2026 conference held on 21 August 2026, McKinsey partner Cheryl Lim stated that about 76% of jobs may need fundamental redesign as AI changes work [4]. Leaders from McKinsey, SAP, Anthropic India, and SPEC Finance discussed workforce reskilling and the challenge of converting AI investments into business results [4]. While Nomura concludes AI has been a net positive for jobs in India thus far, the firm notes that the rapid evolution from simple task automation toward agentic systems could significantly alter labor market impacts in coming years [2]. For executive leadership and global IT outsourcing strategists, this shift signals a fundamental transformation in talent pipeline management and offshore labor models [1].