AI, Hospitality Sectors Help White-Collar Job Market Grow 4% In February, Reports Naukri

The Indian white-collar job market remained upbeat in February 2025, with a 4% year-on-year growth, according to a report brought out by job portal Naukri on Monday.

It stated that recruitments in the artificial intelligence—which includes machine learning also—and the hospitality sectors helped the employment rate in the space flourish.

Pointing to both January and February, the report stated that the job market has begun the new year on a positive note.

"Moreover, considering that February last year saw an 8% de-growth, it looks even more promising this year around. While AI/ML hiring continues its buoyant trend, it is also encouraging to see sectors like hospitality driving growth," Naukri Chief Business Officer Pawan Goyal said, quoting the Naukri JobSpeak Index report.

The Naukri JobSpeak is a monthly index that tracks Indian job market trends and hiring activity based on new job listings and recruiter searches on Naukri.com's resume database.

The other sectors that demonstrated positive performance in February include real estate (9%), FMCG (8%), pharma (5%), and GCC (2%), while banking continued to decline at 6%.

However, it noted that IT hiring remained flat at an overall level. At the same time, it said that the technology sector showed signs of improvement when compared to its steep decline for the whole of 2024.

Hiring in emerging IT cities such as Jaipur and Coimbatore grew 19% and 10%, thereby bucking the trends in other places.

When it came to hiring freshers, the report found that overall, it remained flattish in February 2025.

But the hospitality and telecom sectors witnessed a 23% and 11% growth in fresher recruitment, respectively, it added.

—With PTI inputs