IT, BPM industry to add more 300,000 jobs by FY2023: TeamLease report

Companies looking for candidates with digital skills and engineering graduates from smaller cities

India’s information technology (IT) and business process management (BPM) workforce will grow by 7 per cent in FY2023 as more than 300,000 jobs are created, said a report on Monday.

Headcount will increase from 5.1 million to 5.45 million, said TeamLease Digital in “Digital Employment Outlook Report” for the first half of 2023. Demand for digital skills will grow by 8.4 per cent by the end of FY2022.

Contractual staffing headcount is expected to grow 21 per cent, fueled by investments and companies installing new technologies. IT services companies, global capability centres (GCC), and product development companies are the top contract staffing consumers, contributing more than 70 per cent of this trend.

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“IT-BPM industry continues to be a sunshine industry in India, being the largest employer in the private sector, employing about 3.9 million people, and contributing to over 8 per cent of the GDP. Our industry here, also amounts to 55 per cent of the global outsourcing market,” said Sunil C, chief operating officer at TeamLease Digital.

“Overall we also estimate that India’s technology employment will grow from 5 million to 10 million in the next few years”, he said.

At least 7 out of 10 IT companies in FY2023 will look for candidates with digital skills from emerging locations, or smaller cities. MarTech (marketing technology) and IoT (internet of things) of are two new additions to the digital skill set this year, with demand for MarTech expected to increase by 5 per cent to 7 per cent and that of IoT by 4 per cent to 6 per cent for FY-2023.

“Gone are the days, where talent would necessarily need to move to cities to find jobs. Today, with work from home avenues increasing and more non metro locations becoming popular for digital skills, companies are taking the jobs to people, instead of candidates migrating to the cities looking for jobs,” said Sunil, referring to emerging cities becoming important for digital skills.

Thiruvananthapuram, Coimbatore, Cochin, Chandigarh and Ahmedabad are building digital skills owing to the strong presence of large Tier 1 players, product companies, GICs, and Startups. At least 20 per cent of digital talent employed in Tier 1 cities are currently in emerging locations due to continuing work from home (WFH).

Additionally, hiring of engineering graduates is also seeing momentum from emerging locations, but there is still untapped potential. Only 33 per cent of engineering graduates (495000 from the 1.5 million) are getting hired and 35 per cent of the graduates are emerging from the top 500 cities.

Indian IT-BPM attrition continues to be on a higher side and it is expected to continue in the next quarters. In FY-2023, contract staffing attrition is likely to increase from 49 per cent to 50 per cent at least. Gender parity is improving. Industry leaders reported contractual gender diversity in digital skills in FY2022 (at 20 per cent currently) and in FY23 it is going to grow to 25 per cent.