India Hiring Trends Q3 2026: Sectors, Cities and Jobs Data

Q3 2026 at a glance

The Naukri JobSpeak index tracks new white-collar job postings each month against the same month a year earlier. It does not publish a quarterly figure, so we show the three months side by side.

AI and ML hiring: the one constant

AI and machine learning roles grew 33% year on year in July ¹, 31% in August ³ and 20% in September ⁴. No other category grew that strongly in all three months.

IT and software hiring as a whole was far more mixed: up 6% in July ² and 11% in August ³, then down 4% in September ⁴. Hiring by global capability centres (GCCs) rose 5% in July ², 10% in August ³ and 4% in September ⁴.

Info Edge's MD and CEO, Hitesh Oberoi, summed up September as "a hiring market that remains steady, but more selective" ⁴.

Sectors: who is hiring and who is slowing

Outside technology, auto was the only sector to grow strongly in both August and September ³⁴. Healthcare, insurance and retail were strong in August ³ but flat or slightly down by September ⁴, while hospitality and education declined in all three months ¹³⁴.

Cities: Hyderabad leads, with Chennai and Kolkata close

Hyderabad grew fastest among the metros in both August (+23%) ³ and September (+9%) ⁴. Kolkata (+22%) and Chennai (+20%) were next in August ³; in September Chennai was second at +6% ⁴. Bengaluru grew 14% in August and 4% in September, while Delhi NCR and Mumbai both slipped 6% in September ³⁴.

GCC hiring shows the same pattern more sharply. In September, GCC postings rose 23% in Hyderabad, 13% in Chennai, 11% in Pune and 3% in Bengaluru ⁴; in July, Chennai's GCC hiring was up 34% and Hyderabad's 22% ².

Experience: mid-senior demand held up best

In August every experience band grew, from freshers (+15%) to those with more than 16 years (+13%) ³. By September the picture had narrowed: fresher hiring was up only 1% and the 4 to 7 year band was down 2%, while the 8 to 12 year (+5%), 13 to 16 year (+7%) and 16+ year (+5%) bands kept growing ⁴.

IT services headcount: barely moving

TCS, the only large IT services firm to have reported July to September results at the time of writing, ended the quarter with 598,056 employees, up from 593,798 in June: a net addition of 4,258 ⁸⁹. Its attrition was 13.3% ⁸, and it onboarded about 10,000 freshers in the quarter ¹⁰.

In April to June, Infosys's headcount fell by 532 to 328,062, with attrition at 13.0% ¹¹, although the company has said it plans to recruit 20,000 college graduates this year ¹⁶. Wipro added 888 people in the same quarter, to 243,044, with attrition at 13.9% ¹².

The growth is in GCCs instead. India had 2,117 GCCs employing about 2.36 million professionals in FY26, and the number of GCCs has risen 32% since FY2021 ¹³.

The wider labour market

India's unemployment rate for people aged 15 and over was 5.0% in August 2026, down from 5.1% in July and 5.5% in June ⁵⁶. Urban unemployment was higher, at 6.8% in August, against 4.1% in rural areas ⁵. In the April to June quarter, urban unemployment was 6.7%, and 8.7% for urban women ⁷.

Female labour force participation rose to 34.8% in August ⁵. The economy grew 7.8% in real terms in April to June 2026 ¹⁴.

A second index disagrees

Not every measure agrees. The foundit insights tracker, which counts activity on a different job platform, showed hiring down 10% year on year in August, with IT-Software down 11% ¹⁵. The two indices use different methods and platforms, so we do not combine them.

Read together, they point to the same conclusion: demand is real but concentrated in AI and ML, GCCs and experienced talent, rather than spread across the market.

What this means if you are hiring

Our reading of the quarter, for companies hiring in India now:

• Expect competition for AI and ML talent to stay intense. Hiring managers should decide early which skills are must-haves, because candidates with real production experience are fielding several conversations.
• In Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune, you are competing with GCCs for the same engineers. Benchmark offers against GCC pay, not only against other startups.
• Mid-senior and senior roles take longer to close when demand for 8 to 16 years of experience is rising. Plan for notice periods and counter-offers from the start.
• A "selective" market cuts both ways: candidates are being assessed more carefully, and good ones notice a slow or vague process. Evidence-backed shortlists and quick decisions are an advantage.

How we compiled this

We used the monthly Naukri JobSpeak releases for July, August and September 2026, government data from the Periodic Labour Force Survey and national accounts, company results filings, and the Nasscom–Zinnov GCC study. Figures are quoted as published, without adjustment.

We have not used EPFO payroll data, which is often quoted in hiring reports, because we could not find a published monthly release for 2026 to cite. We will update this page when September's labour force survey and October's job index are released.