India's AI Job Paradox: Hiring Outpaces Layoffs, Workers Still Worried

Quick answer: A Nomura report released in early August 2026 counted 83,100 AI-related hires in India against 31,921 layoffs and attrition since 2022, a net gain of 51,179 jobs (ThePrint). At almost the same time, a separate survey of 1,552 India-based professionals on the workplace platform Blind found 66% of AI and ML workers expect a layoff or headcount cut within three to six months (Business Today). Both numbers are real. They are just measuring different things, and the gap between them is the actual story.

What the Nomura report actually counted

Nomura economists Sonal Varma and Si Ying Toh built their count by tracking AI-related hiring and job-loss announcements reported in the news across Asia from 2022 through August 2026, not from a government jobs census. For India specifically, they logged 83,100 AI-related hires against 31,921 layoffs and attrition, a net addition of 51,179 roles. Across Asia as a whole, the picture was similar in shape: 130,758 hires against 60,654 losses, with technology-sector roles making up more than 90% of the new hires and financial-services roles accounting for roughly 60% of the losses.

Nomura's own report is explicit that this is a directional signal, not a precise labour-market count: the figures are, in the bank's words, "indicative of broader trends rather than absolute job numbers," pieced together from fragmented, publicly reported hiring and layoff announcements across several Asian countries. A lot of ordinary hiring and firing never makes the news at all, so the real totals on both sides are almost certainly larger, and there is no way to know whether the ratio between them would hold.

The two-tier effect hiding inside the headline number

The more useful sentence in Nomura's report is not the net total, it is the description of who is actually on each side of it: "Most firing cases are support teams replaced by chatbots, while most hiring cases are of IT-services graduates that firms explicitly credit to AI demand." That is a description of two different labour markets moving in opposite directions inside the same economy, not one AI job market. Routine, script-following support and back-office work is the part getting automated away. Fresh IT-services hiring credited to AI demand, and analysts have separately been describing this as a broader "two-tier" pattern, where AI adoption reduces entry-level headcount while increasing demand for experienced workers who understand both the technology and the business problem it is being pointed at.

If you are early in your career, that distinction matters more than the net-positive headline. A net gain of 51,179 jobs is real and worth knowing. It does not mean every kind of entry-level role is safe, and Nomura's own account says the opposite for at least one category: support work that can be scripted into a chatbot.

Why the people doing the jobs don't feel reassured

The Blind survey, run in July 2026 and covering 1,552 India-based professionals, was published on 10 August 2026, just days after the Nomura numbers. It found 66% of AI and ML workers expect a layoff or a meaningful reduction in their team's headcount within three to six months. Sales and marketing staff were even more anxious, at 68%, and product and design staff were close behind at 65%. Engineers reported the least worry: only 24% called a cut "very likely," though a broader measure of at-risk sentiment among engineers overall still ran at 58%. Data and analytics professionals sat in between, at 51% reporting at-risk sentiment.

The same survey asked which companies employees personally felt most at risk at. Perceived risk was highest at Salesforce (81%), Oracle (80%), Uber (77%) and PayPal (75%), and lowest at Freshworks (44%) and Zoho (9%). These are employee-reported perceptions of risk at their own or comparable companies, not confirmed layoff plans at any of them, and Business Today's coverage does not name the analysts or an author behind the survey write-up, which is worth knowing before treating any single company's number as a forecast rather than a mood reading.

What employees said they actually watch for, ahead of any formal announcement: hiring freezes (27%), budget or headcount reductions (24%) and, least commonly, a formal layoff announcement itself (9%). In other words, most people who expect a cut are reading indirect signals, not waiting for a memo, which is exactly the kind of anxiety a net-positive hiring number does nothing to settle.

Some of this anxiety has a visible, confirmed source

The worry is not purely a mood. Oracle cut roughly 21,000 roles globally across March and June 2026 while explicitly redirecting the savings toward AI data-centre investment, one of more than twenty companies tracked in 2026 that have cited AI as a factor in layoffs (TechCrunch). That specific tracker does not break Oracle's cuts down by country, so we cannot say how much of it landed in India specifically, and we have not repeated any India-specific figure for Oracle that we could not independently confirm.

What we could not verify

We read Nomura's findings through ThePrint's coverage rather than the bank's original research note, which we could not access directly; ThePrint's report does carry the report's own caveat language, which we have quoted above rather than smoothed over. The Blind survey write-up did not name an analyst or author, and we could not independently confirm Blind's sampling methodology beyond what Business Today reported. Both sources describe reported hiring and firing announcements and a self-selected professional-network survey, not a national jobs census, so treat the specific figures as evidence of direction and scale, not a precise count of every AI-related job created or lost in India this year.

What this means if you are building a data or AI career right now

Two things can be true at once, and both are true here. India is a net beneficiary of AI-related hiring so far, and individual anxiety about AI-driven job loss is real and, for some functions and companies, reasonably well founded. The practical takeaway is not "don't worry" or "panic," it is to look at which side of the two-tier market a given role sits on. Routine, script-following work is the part being automated. Roles that combine technical skill with real business judgement, the kind our Data Analytics and Data Science programs are built around, are the ones Nomura's own data shows companies still hiring for. If you want that mapped to your specific background rather than a generic answer, a free counselling session will tell you honestly, including if the answer is that neither program is the right fit yet.

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Is AI creating more jobs than it is destroying in India?

So far, according to a Nomura report released in August 2026: it counted 83,100 AI-related hires in India against 31,921 layoffs and attrition since 2022, a net gain of 51,179 jobs. Nomura itself describes these figures as indicative of broader trends rather than an absolute jobs count, since they are built from publicly reported hiring and layoff announcements, not a national census.

Which jobs are actually being cut because of AI in India?

Nomura's report states that most firing cases are support teams being replaced by chatbots, while most new hiring is IT-services graduates that companies explicitly credit to AI demand. That points to a two-tier effect: routine, scriptable support work is being automated, while roles combining technical skill with business judgement are still being hired for.

Do most AI and data professionals in India expect to lose their jobs?

A July 2026 survey of 1,552 India-based professionals on Blind, published 10 August 2026, found 66% of AI and ML workers expect a layoff or headcount cut within three to six months. Data and analytics professionals reported 51% at-risk sentiment, and engineers were the least worried at 24% calling a cut very likely, though 58% of engineers overall still reported some at-risk sentiment.

Which companies do employees see as the highest AI-layoff risk?

In the same Blind survey, employees reported the highest perceived risk at Salesforce (81%), Oracle (80%), Uber (77%) and PayPal (75%), and the lowest at Freshworks (44%) and Zoho (9%). These are employee perceptions of risk, not confirmed layoff plans at any of these companies.

What should someone starting a data science or AI career take from this?

Focus on the side of the market Nomura's own data shows is still hiring: roles that combine technical skill with real business judgement, not routine work that can be fully scripted. A net-positive hiring number is real, but it does not mean every kind of entry-level role is equally safe.