AI Booms, Healthcare Hires & Experience Wins: Top Job Market Trends In January 2024

Naukri JobSpeak Index, which measures white-collar hiring in India, stood at 2455 in January 2024, registering an increase of 1% over the preceding month and about 11% lower than last year.

Healthcare, Hospitality and FMCG are the major sectors that witnessed year-on-year (YoY) job growth in January 2024 in an otherwise cautious market.

Senior professionals and premium job seekers were in the highest demand. New jobs in AI increased by 12% in January 2024 vs last year.

Full-stack AI scientists in heavy demand

Hiring for niche AI-related roles such as Machine Learning Engineer and Full Stack AI Scientist jumped YoY, by a staggering 46% and 23%, respectively.

Conventional AI roles such as Data Scientist were also in good demand. This is in contrast to a modest 1% growth in overall IT jobs in January 2024 compared to the preceding month.

On a YoY basis, the overall hiring in the IT sector is 19% lower than the boom times of January 2023.

Healthcare, Hospitality and FMCG sectors in top gear

Hiring in the Healthcare sector increased by 7% YoY in January 2024 with a maximum increase in demand for administrative roles. Hiring in the travel and hospitality sector recorded a growth of 5% YoY.

With the ongoing boom in domestic and international tourism, demand for Restaurant Managers and Service Managers remained elevated. Hiring in this sector was particularly high in the cities of Bangalore and Mumbai.

New job offers in the FMCG witnessed an increase of 5% in January this year as compared to the same month of 2023. An uptick in demand in rural areas, aided by a marketing push by FMCG players, led to positive momentum in the hiring trends in the sector.

Some job roles that witnessed the highest demand in the FMCG sector included Assembly Line Operator, Factory Head, Production Engineer and Production Manager. Kolkata and Pune topped the cities that offered new jobs in the sector in January 2024.

The major sectors that witnessed degrowth in hiring included BPO and Insurance, which saw a decline of 16% and 8% respectively. Further, the Education and Retail sectors saw YoY contraction of 7% each.

Senior professionals, higher salaries make a splash

Senior professionals with over 16 years of experience witnessed maximum positive momentum in job offers. The hiring for this experience segment went up by a staggering 19% in the latest month as compared to the corresponding month last year.

New job offers for professionals falling in the experience category of 13-16 years went up by almost 2%. However, for professionals falling in the experience categories of 8-12 years, 4-7 years and for freshers, the new jobs created were lower by 18%, 7% and 10%, respectively, compared to January 2023.

At the same time, job offers in the salary range of more than 20 lakhs per annum went up by 18%. New jobs in the salary range of 13-20 lakhs per annum saw a marginal contraction of 1%, while new job openings in salaries less than 12 lakhs witnessed degrowth.

Pawan Goyal, CBO, Naukri.com, said, “The significant rise in AI-related jobs is indicative of the changing skill requirements in the IT sector, while the positive hiring sentiment in Healthcare, Hospitality and FMCG reflect a strong domestic economy.”