While the hiring intent among Indian companies has declined 7% in the last three months, it’s still second highest among 42 countries around the world, according to a survey by Manpower Group, a recruitment firm based out of Wisconsin in the US. Compared to the same time last year, the hiring intention in India is 18% better.
| Country | Net employment outlook |
| UAE | 45% |
| India | 40% |
| Brazil | 36% |
| Costa Rica | 35% |
| China | 34% |
43% of employers in India said company expansion is the top reason for staffing increases, decreasing marginally by 1% since the previous quarter, the report released on September 9 added.
Two sectors with the strongest hiring intent are energy & utilities, financials and real estate.
These are the five segments with the strongest net employment outlook.
“Nearly one in three (36%) employers who plan to hire in Q4 are doing so to keep up with tech advancements, and this is especially true among organizations in the Asia-Pacific region,” the report said. The India average, too, stood at 36%.
A similar proportion of employers, 38%, said that automation had led to a reduction in their workforce. The second-biggest reason, at 34%, for job losses was a market shift that lowered the demand for workers.
The survey, which was conducted from July 1 to 31, showed that the following three sectors showed the sharpest increase in hiring intent compared to the same time last year:
| Sector | Increase in hiring intent (YoY) |
| Energy & Utilities | 74% |
| Transport, Logistics, & Automotive | 69% |
| Healthcare and Lifesciences | 57% |
The Indian government estimated the overall unemployment rate between April and June 2025 at 5.4% among those aged 15 and above. The labour force participation rate (LFPR)—which measures the share of the population working or actively seeking work—rose to 54.9% in July, up from 54.2% in June.
The top five sectors employing the most people in India are agriculture (45%), trade, hotels, and restaurants (12.1%), construction (13%), manufacturing (11.4%), and transport, storage, and communications (5.4%).
As per the Manpower Group survey, jobs may returning to some of the employment-intensive sectors like automobile manufacturing, real estate, communication services (where the net employment outlook is up 33% year-on-year). This may add to the optimism in the country’s consumption economy, which got a fillip from reduced goods and services tax earlier this month.