Artificial intelligence (AI) is generating more jobs than it is eliminating in India, but the benefits are not being evenly distributed. The biggest impact is being felt at the entry level, where companies are cutting back on fresher recruitment even as demand for experienced professionals continues to grow, according to a Nomura report.
India is emerging as one of the main centres ofin Asia’s labour market. Its large workforce and status as a global hub for IT services and back-office operations make it particularly exposed to the technology’s rapid adoption.
AI has created more jobs than it has destroyed so far
Nomura’s report, Beyond the Headlines:– So Far, examined 69 company announcements across Asia, mostly made between 2022 and August 2026.
The analysis found that companies had announced around 131,000 AI-related jobs, compared with about 61,000 job losses linked to AI.
India, China and the Philippines have so far recorded a net increase in AI-related employment.
However, the figures do not necessarily mean that the jobs being created are replacing the ones being lost. For younger workers, in particular, the changing nature of recruitment could create a bigger problem.
Freshers face a tougher job market
Nomura describes the emerging employment landscape as a K-shaped market, where opportunities are diverging between junior and experienced workers.
Companies are increasingly looking for senior employees who bring industry knowledge, management skills and the ability to work with people, while reducing their reliance on entry-level staff.
In India, a survey of 651 IT companies conducted by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations found that 55% had reduced entry-level hiring. By comparison, only 14% reported a decline in recruitment for senior positions.
A similar pattern has emerged in South Korea. Youth employment among people aged 15 to 29 dropped by 211,000, with almost the entire decline occurring in sectors heavily exposed to AI, according to Bank of Korea research.
Meanwhile, employment among people in their 50s increased by 209,000, with more than two-thirds of those additional jobs coming from industries with high AI exposure.
Companies are hiring fewer people rather than making mass layoffs
The shift towards AI is not always resulting in large-scale job cuts. Instead, many companies are reducing the number of new employees they hire.
Staffing firm Xpheno estimates that net IT-sector hiring in India fell from around 600,000 in FY22 to 140,000 in FY26. Much of the reduction has come from fewer campus placements and slower recruitment rather than widespread layoffs.
Nomura refers to this trend as “silent firing”. While it attracts less attention than mass redundancies, it could have a major effect on young people attempting to secure their first jobs.
Banking and technology bear the brunt of AI-linked job losses
Nomura found that financial services and technology accounted for the majority of documented AI-related layoffs.
Financial services represented around 58% of the recorded job losses, while technology contributed another 30%.
Banks demonstrate how AI can allow companies to expand certain activities while keeping their workforce relatively small, according to Nomura.
The positions most exposed so far tend to involve routine and lower-skilled tasks. These include reconciliation, compliance, and data-entry roles in banking, customer service jobs increasingly handled by chatbots, as well as junior technology positions such as quality assurance testing and entry-level coding.
Physical jobs remain harder to automate
Industries that depend heavily on physical work or direct human interaction have so far experienced relatively few AI-related job losses.
Manufacturing, construction, direct healthcare and education remain more difficult to automate because many of their tasks require physical involvement or complex interactions between people.
At the same time, AI-related recruitment remains overwhelmingly concentrated in the technology industry. More than 90% of the jobs identified by Nomura were in technology, with less than 10% spread across other sectors.
India creates AI jobs while China focuses on advanced roles
In India, much of the new AI-related employment has emerged in areas such as data annotation, linguistics and AI-focused IT services.
China, meanwhile, has seen stronger demand for highly skilled graduates involved in developing and expanding proprietary AI models.
Outside the technology sector, AI-related roles remain relatively limited. Some examples include AI risk analysts working for banks and specialists involved in autonomous vehicle technology.
Nomura expects AI-related employment to spread into more industries as adoption increases, although the data so far does not show a significant expansion beyond technology.
India faces both risk and opportunity
India’s massive IT services and business-process outsourcing industries were built around tasks that are increasingly becoming easier for AI systems to perform. This leaves some traditional back-office and entry-level positions particularly vulnerable.
However, the country also has a large pool of engineers and technology professionals who could benefit from the demand for AI-related skills and services.
For now, Nomura’s findings suggest that AI has had a net positive effect on employment in India. But the report cautions that the current numbers may not provide a clear picture of what lies ahead.