White collar hiring activity witnessed a growth of 10 per cent year-on-year in October mainly driven by a rise in recruitment in sectors, including oil and gas, pharmaceuticals, FMCG, and IT, a report said on Monday.

The Naukri JobSpeak Index, India's leading indicator of white-collar hiring activity, demonstrated robust growth in October, reaching 2,733 points compared to 2,484 in the same month of 2023, marking a significant 10 per cent year-on-year increase.

Key sectors, including oil & gas (18 per cent), pharma/biotech (12 per cent), FMCG (8 per cent), and IT (6 per cent) emerged as primary drivers of this positive trend, with AI/ML roles showing exceptional growth at 39 per cent year-on-year, the report stated.

Hiring in the IT sector showed positive growth in four out of the seven months this financial year, auguring well for balance of year trends, added the report.

The Naukri JobSpeak is a monthly Index representing the state of the Indian job market and hiring activity based on new job listings and job-related searches by recruiters on the resume database of Naukri.com.

The report further revealed that overall, global capability centres (GCCs) demonstrated consistent growth with a 17 per cent year-on-year increase in October.

GCCs showed significant traction in emerging hubs like Kolkata (68.46 per cent) and Ahmedabad (47.68 per cent) indicating a growing preference among international companies to expand beyond traditional tech centres for their India operations, it added.

The festive period also witnessed a significant growth in data-focused positions -- data/big data testing engineer (64 per cent), full stack data scientist (46 per cent), data platform engineer (26 per cent) and data scientist (23 per cent), it said.

The report also found that after a sluggish performance throughout 2024, hiring for freshers showed encouraging signs with a 6 per cent year-on-year growth in October.

When it came to locations, southern states demonstrated exceptional growth in white-collar hiring, with multiple cities showing strong year-on-year gains, said the report.

Tamil Nadu emerged as the strongest performer with a 24 per cent year-on-year growth, followed by Telangana (16 per cent), Karnataka (12 per cent), Andhra Pradesh (9 per cent) and Kerala (7 per cent), it stated.

"The accelerating pace of fresher hiring is a strong indicator of business confidence and presents exciting opportunities for upcoming graduates," Naukri Chief Business Officer Pawan Goyal said.

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