MAJOR JOB-LOSS REPORTED IN COUNTRY IN 2023-24
More than 90,000 IT employees already lost jobs in 2024, many now facing silent layoffs
The tech industry continues to witness significant layoffs in 2024, with a growing trend of silent layoffs now affecting many IT employees.

Unemployment is one of the most pressing challenges of India. According to the latest Annual Survey of Unincorporated Enterprises (ASUSE) for 2021-22 and 2022-23 released by the Union Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), nearly half of Indian states and three Union territories saw informal sector job losses over seven years.

On July 9, credit markets rating agency India Ratings released a report saying that 63 lakh informal sector enterprises shut down in the country resulting in a loss of 1.6 crore jobs between the financial years 2015-’16 and 2022-’23. The report blamed the downturn on the shocks to India’s economy due to demonetisation, the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax and the Covid-19 pandemic.

The India Ratings report, on the other hand, compares the 2022-’23 findings to that of 2015-’16 when the last round of the government survey had been conducted. It calculates the decline in jobs in the seven-year period and then estimates the actual scale of job losses by using previous trends.

In Short
98,834 tech employees laid off in the first half of 2024
Silent layoffs are increasingly affecting Indian IT workers
Higher-paid employees are particularly vulnerable

According to a report by Moneycontrol, the Indian IT and IT-enabled services (ITeS) sector is increasingly resorting to this practice, which involves subtly pressuring employees to leave without making it public. The All India IT & ITeS Employees' Union (AIITEU) revealed that approximately 20,000 technology professionals were affected by such unannounced layoffs in 2023, with the actual numbers suspected to be even higher.