Indian IT companies haven’t been hiring as aggressively as they used to in the last decade, and this has begun showing in their employee profiles.
The share of employees under the age of 30 has fallen to a 10-year low at Infosys, and a 5-year low at TCS, ET reports. In FY24, just 54.7 percent of Infosys employees and 50.3 percent of TCS employees were under the age of 30. In comparison, the share of senior employees above the age of 50 has risen at both firms.
At Infosys, the percentage of employees under the age of 30 was as high as 68.5 percent in FY15. It ranged between 58 percent and 68 percent from FY15 to FY 19. In FY22 and FY22, the share was 59.6 percent, which has fallen to a 10-year low of 54.7 percent in FY24.
At rival TCS, the share of employees under the age of 30 was 52 percent in FY20, which rose to 56 percent and 59 percent respectively in FY21 and FY22. In FY23, the share rose further to 52.9 percent, but has fallen to a 5-year low of 50.3 percent in FY24.
These trends correspond which how IT firms have hired employees in the recent past. The post Covid boom saw IT firms hire large number of employees to service the greater demand from clients in countries which were flush with cash thanks to the lowered interest rates. But as interest rates have risen, demand for IT services has tapered, which has meant that IT companies haven’t hired as aggressively in FY24, and even skipped visiting campuses for placements. This has caused employee profiles at the two companies to change — even as the share of young employees has declined, the shares of employees over the age of 50 has risen.
This does seem to be an anomaly, but one that’ll likely soon be corrected. IT companies usually prefer having higher shares of young staff because that leads to a lower wage bill — junior employees make far less money than more senior employees. As such, even as Indian IT firms are seeing their shares of young employees fall, it could soon revert to normal in the quarters to come.