Leading Indian IT companies have seen a decrease in headcount for the fourth quarter running.
To offset attrition, hiring has been sluggish, and entry-level recruitment has decreased.
In major markets, demand is uncertain, which is contributing to the headcount decline.
Read on to find out about this decline in headcount.
Leading IT Companies Notice Decrease In Headcount
Data compiled by specialized staffing firm Xpheno shows that the top eight IT companies’ combined headcount decreased by 17,534 during the quarter that ended on December 31 when compared to the preceding three months.
At these companies—Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Wipro, HCLTech, LTI Mindtree, L&T Technology Services, Tech Mahindra, and Cognizant’s India business—the number of employees decreased by 75,000 in comparison to a year earlier, marking the largest decline in at least six years.
According to Kamal Karanth, a cofounder of Xpheno, the total number of employees in this group of eight companies has now decreased to almost that in early 2022. These businesses employed little under two million people as of the end of December.
Hiring Peaked in 2021 and Early 2022
Millions of engineers are employed in India’s IT sector, which saw a peak in hiring in 2021 and early 2022 due to the post-Covid demand for global cloud migration and digitization.
However, the demand has now decreased as a result of consumers in markets such as the US and Europe being wary of discretionary spending due to rising interest rates, inflation, and worries about the conflicts between Russia and Ukraine and Israel and Hamas.
The slowdown in demand has affected their hiring and headcount in the last few quarters due to the backlog of overhiring that occurred in 2021.
In the January–March quarter of 2023, these companies’ net headcount began to decline, dropping by 12,455 from the preceding three months. Xpheno’s data shows that the number fell by 28,387 in the April-June quarter and by 16,624 in the next three months through September.
However, experts have predicted that the industry will see another side of the coin soon.
According to Yugal Joshi, a partner at the tech industry research firm Everest Group, the majority of platform vendors and cloud providers have shown encouraging recent financial results.
