AI may not be cutting jobs yet, but entry-level hiring is showing early signs of slowing, according to a new report by Anthropic, even as India’s IT services companies continue campus recruitment.
The report, titled Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence, finds no clear rise in unemployment in occupations most exposed to artificial intelligence since the release of ChatGPT in late 2022. But it points to early signals that hiring, particularly of younger workers, may be weakening in these roles.
Researchers analysed occupations based on “observed exposure”, a measure that combines the theoretical ability of large language models to perform tasks with real-world usage data. They found that jobs with greater AI exposure tend to show slower projected employment growth.
The study notes that job-finding rates for workers aged between 22 and 25 entering highly exposed occupations fell by about 14% compared with 2022 levels, suggesting that the first labour market effects of AI may show up in hiring rather than layoffs.
The occupations with the highest exposure include computer programmers, customer service representatives, data entry workers and financial analysts.
IT sector hiring in India
In India, the findings come at a time when large IT services companies are still hiring fresh graduates, though hiring patterns remain uneven across the industry.
Infosys chief financial officer Jayesh Sanghrajka said during the company’s Q3 earnings press conference that the had hired around 18,000 freshers so far in FY26 and is on track to onboard about 20,000 during FY26.
Tata Consultancy Services plans to hire around 42,000 freshers in FY26 while adding more specialised entry-level talent.
At Wipro, hiring has been more selective. Speaking during the company’s Q3FY26 earnings press conference, chief human resources officer Saurabh Govil said the company had hired more than 5,000 freshers so far this fiscal year.
HCLTech has stepped up fresher hiring compared with last year. Chief financial officer Ramakrishnan Sundararajan said the company added 10,032 freshers in FY26 so far.
Tech Mahindra, which is undergoing a business turnaround until FY27, has taken a more cautious approach.
“We did have a lower level of fresh hires this year as compared to the previous year, but that's because of the demand environment. We've flagged it out,” said Mohit Joshi, chief executive officer and managing director.
He added: “Last financial year we've taken on 6,000 freshers. This year was lower than that.”
AI adoption
Despite this, the report stresses that AI adoption in workplaces remains far below its theoretical capability. In computer and mathematics roles, for example, around 94% of tasks could theoretically be assisted by AI, but current usage covers only about 33% of them.
“AI is far from reaching its theoretical capability: actual coverage remains a fraction of what’s feasible,” the report says.
Overall, the report finds that AI has not yet caused a measurable increase in unemployment in highly exposed professions, but suggests that early labour market changes could appear first in hiring trends rather than job losses.