BENGALURU: Rising recession fears and macroeconomic headwinds have impacted hiring in the IT sector, as in the second quarter, top four IT companies have hired only 28,837 employees compared to 52,842 in the previous quarter.
The country’s largest IT services company Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has added only 9,840 employees in Q2 compared to 14,136 in the previous quarter. The company’s hiring was at an all-time high in the fourth quarter of last fiscal. It added 35,209 employees on a net basis.
During the company’s earnings call, Rajesh Gopinathan, CEO, TCS said that they have been significantly investing into headcount addition through last year. “Our headcount growth was close to 20% against revenue growth of about 15%, and that we have built up a fair amount of headroom.. we will be using that lever a bit more as we go into this year, and try to balance our overall headcount to our overall revenue from a longer-term perspective,” he said.
Infosys in Q2 added over 10,000 employees compared to 21,171 employees in the previous quarter. Wipro’s net addition in Q2 was lowest as it added only 605 employees when compared to 15,446 in the first quarter. The company has onboarded 14,000 freshers in the first half of this fiscal.
HCLTech is the only company that added more employees compared to Q1. It added 8,359 employees as against 2,089 in the first quarter. Meanwhile, staffing firm Xpheno in its recent report said the IT services sector registered a 13% drop in volume in September compared to August 2022.
As of September, it recorded only 70,000 active jobs, the lowest count in 17 months. It also said that the sector had its sharpest YoY drop of 36% in active jobs volume, and the previous low was 23% drop in August 2022. With the drop in count in September 2022, the IT services sector has recorded a 7-month lowering volume trend. According to Xpheno, last month closed with an Active Jobs count of 2,10,000 as against 2,60,000 clocked in August 2022.