Digital skills fueled India’s employment growth in first half of 2018

Earlier this year we celebrated reaching 50 million LinkedIn members in India, a major milestone as we continue to work to help create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. While 50 million members is just a slice of India’s workforce, this community provides real-time insights into a key segment of India’s labor market, especially in rapidly transforming industries such as tech and finance. By using these insights to provide a complementary source of economic data, we hope to support the Indian government’s work to create economic opportunities for everyone in India.

Today we are delighted to introduce the inaugural LinkedIn Workforce Report – Professional Edition for India. The report is a biannual look at the key trends in the Indian professional workforce, as represented by member activity and job postings on the LinkedIn platform.

I’m excited to share with you a few of the key insights from the report:

• Industry Growth | The Legal and Education industries grew rapidly in the first half of 2018 – At the national level, while the growth in the Legal industry was driven by increases in traditional roles such as Associates and Lawyers, we started to see indications of digital transformation as Software Engineers became one of the top occupations hired for in the industry. In another notable increase, the Education industry is humming, driven by various forces including: growing market size ($180 billion by 2020, from $100 billion today), technological collaborations (such as new edtech startups) which attracted significant investment, and policy emphasis, like Skill India Mission, designed to improve employability and which is also generating private sector interest and participation (such as specialized training centres). Other industries that also posted growth include Construction, Software & IT Services, Finance and Manufacturing.
• Hot Jobs | Software Engineers dominate – This role appeared in the top 10 list for 17 of the 20 industries we looked at. Notably, we saw demand for Software Engineers in industries such as Transportation & Logistics, Retail, Wellness & Fitness, Consumer Goods, Education, Recreation & Travel, in line with the vibrant tech start-up scene. The range of industries employing Software Engineers also reflects the increasing digitisation of Indian businesses’ operations across all sectors as digital transformation takes hold. Besides tech-related jobs like App Developers and Java Software Engineers, Business Development Managers and Product Managers were also among the top 10 jobs we are seeing companies hiring for.
• Migration | The U.S. and India talent exchange is booming - Unsurprisingly, the United States is India’s top migration partner in terms of volume in the first half of the year, in both directions, given the well-established ties of education, trade, investment and commerce between the two nations. For professionals in India, other top-draw destinations are the United Arab Emirates, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. Flowing in the other direction, the United States, United Arab Emirates and United Kingdom were the top sources of migration into India. Within India, Kalyan emerged as the top city gaining talent in the first half of this year, fuelled by growth in the Retail industry. Bengaluru and Gurugram followed in second and third places respectively.

This is just a snippet of what’s in the report. If you’d like to see more insights, take a look at the full India National Report and each of the 14 Regional Reports for Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Chandigarh, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kalyan, Kochi, Kolkata, Mumbai, New Delhi, Noida, Pune. 

We started this journey back in late 2016, when LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner met with the Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi. During that meeting, the Prime Minister invited us to use LinkedIn insights to help drive the Skill India Mission, the government’s initiative to align skills training across sectors and states.

Since then, we’ve worked with the state of Kerala to share our real-time global data on in-demand jobs and skills with the state’s community skills parks under the Additional Skill Acquisition Programme (ASAP), with the goal of fostering a responsive skill development ecosystem. We’ve also worked with Infrastructure Leasing and Finance Services (IL&FS) and the Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship to help bridge the widening education-to-employment gap by providing a vocational skilling ecosystem and placement for blue collar workers.

Whether you’re an employer, jobseeker, student, or policymaker, we hope the findings from this report can help you better navigate your way through the labour market today and ultimately reach your goals tomorrow, whatever they may be.

Stay tuned for more from us, as this is the first edition of what will be an ongoing series. We’ll take your feedback and keep working with the government and our partners to ensure we’re putting our data to good use and we’re surfacing macroeconomic insights that can make a difference.