- Specialised positions in AI, machine learning, cloud architecture, and cybersecurity are proliferating, keeping aggregate hiring in positive territory.
The government pushed back forcefully against the narrative that artificial intelligence is hollowing out India’s technology workforce, telling Parliament on Wednesday that the IT sector added 1.35 lakh jobs in FY26 and remains a net employer.
The assertion, delivered in a written reply by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) in the Lok Sabha, lands at a moment of acute anxiety.
Global tech layoffs have crossed 1.16 lakh in the first five months of 2026 alone — the steepest cut in nearly two years — and India has not been immune. Yet the government’s numbers paint a different picture: total IT sector headcount has climbed to 60 lakh, buoyed by demand for next-generation skills even as entry-level roles come under pressure.
The net effect
The ministry acknowledged the churn. Citing NITI Aayog assessments, it noted that AI is rapidly reshaping the workplace and that routine, repeatable IT roles are squarely in the crosshairs. Junior quality assurance positions and Level-1 IT support jobs are bearing the brunt.
But the same technological wave is generating demand faster than it destroys old roles. Specialised positions in AI, machine learning, cloud architecture, and cybersecurity are proliferating, keeping aggregate hiring in positive territory. The government framed this not as a contradiction but as a structural realignment — one where the net effect remains additive.
The ministry also invoked NASSCOM, the industry’s principal lobby, to contextualise the layoff headlines. Workforce adjustments and fluctuating headcount numbers, the ministry said, are being driven by broader economic and business cycles rather than an irreversible contraction in tech employment.
That framing matters. India’s IT services sector is export-oriented and cyclical by nature — hiring swells and contracts with global client budgets. The government’s argument is that what looks like AI-driven job destruction is, in significant part, the normal respiration of a $210-billion export engine recalibrating after a period of overheated post-pandemic hiring.
The global backdrop
The reassurance comes against a brutal international canvas. Over 60,000 tech jobs have been eliminated globally in 2026, with roughly one in five directly attributed to AI integration. Meta, Amazon, and Block have cut workers explicitly to redirect capital toward AI infrastructure.
In India, TeamLease has projected between 25,000 and 35,000 tech job losses this year through silent attrition — productivity-based exits and PIP-driven separations that never make headlines.
Yet NASSCOM’s Strategic Review 2026 corroborates the government’s net-addition figure, and the paradox is becoming a familiar feature of the AI era: traditional roles erode while new ones emerge faster than talent pipelines can fill them.
That last point is the quiet implication beneath the government’s confidence. The distinction between “net jobs added” and “good jobs available to the people being displaced” is substantial. A Level-1 support engineer pushed out of the workforce does not seamlessly become a machine learning engineer, and the government’s reply did not address the reskilling gap directly.
What it did do was draw a line. India’s IT sector, the government is signaling, is not in retreat. It is in transition. And for now, the arithmetic remains on its side.