IT industry may see 10 million workforce in next five years

Bengaluru, 11 December The Indian IT industry is likely to add 3.75 lakh new jobs in the current financial year, taking the total headcount to 4.85 million as the technology sector remains on a positive hiring trajectory, a report by TeamLease digital said.

The industry is on track to reach 10 million workforce in the next five years, with significant increase in contract hiring, the report added.

The report found out that while full-time employment will witness a 17 per cent growth, it is contract staffing that will gain significantly from the positivity in the market.

"IT contract staffing is expected to reach a headcount of 148,000 employees by March 2022. The acceptance of contract staffing has also increased among candidates. Unlike earlier, nearly 10-15 per cent of the contractual IT-BPM joinees in FY22 were earlier employed full-time," the report said.

IT services companies, global capability centres (GCC) and Product development companies are the top contract staffing consumers and they contribute in excess of 70 per cent and the same trend will continue to exist in near future too.

However, attrition will remain at elevated level for both full-time and contractual staffers. In FY22, full-time employment attrition is set to cross from 13 per cent to 24 per cent and contract staffing attrition is expected to grow up to 49 per cent from 40 per cent in FY21.

"The demand-supply gap is widening for data engineering, data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence skills," the report said.