Alternative data for India's job market: no significant chill from AI yet

The rise of artificial intelligence is often viewed as a threat to India's back-office technology firms, but so far the nation's companies are still hiring -- including the software sector.

CEIC has recently added data on the Indian employment market from Foundit, a local job-search platform. We've charted Foundit's "insight tracker" report, which compiles advertisements for jobs across recruitment platforms and is released considerably earlier than India's official statistics.

Employment data is generally only available yearly, so for a somewhat more timely indicator from the Indian state we have visualized net payrolls from the Employee Provident Fund Organisation. This social-security agency is in charge of state pensions, and this indicator is useful proxy for Indian formal employment -- but it is still released about a quarter after Foundit's tracker is published.

As our chart shows, there has been a reasonably tight correlation between the two since 2020 (when measured on a three-month rolling basis) -- and the 2024-25 trend has been more robust than its 2022-23 equivalent. In October, the three-month Foundit metric took a sharp leg down, but that is mostly a result of base effects; year on year. Foundit's tracker has risen 16.5%.

Foundit also tracks job posts by sector, which we have broken down in our second chart. Retail, manufacturing, healthcare and consumer goods have been employment engines; shipping has seen the only significant contraction. Returning to our "AI threat" theme, we have highlighted tech-related sectors; while none are in the top 10, they are still growing. Job posts for "business process outsourcing" (BPO) services saw a three-month rolling growth rate approaching 10%.

Using our map visualization, we can compare the job market in the BPO hub of Bangalore (Bengaluru) to other Indian cities. Foundit indicates that job posts for India's IT capital are outperforming Mumbai, New Delhi and other major centers.

We conclude with a scatterplot and trend line for Indian inflation and unemployment. With price increases moderating since 2023 and unemployment ticking up only slightly, the nation's central bank is in an enviable position. India posted a staggering 8.2% GDP growth rate in Q3 2025, its fastest clip in 6 quarters, with strong contribution from domestic private consumption and investments.

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