India is set to invest heavily in data centre capacity. The growing use of AI services has greatly increased demand for new and larger data centre capacity. Recent data from Indeed Hiring Lab highlights that, in August, 1.3% of Indian job postings mentioned data centres, up from 1.0% a year ago and almost double the rate from two years ago. KPMG also recently estimated that data centres represented a $90 billion opportunity for India by 2035.
As AI adoption accelerates much of the focus has centred on its potential impact on existing jobs from task automation to reshaping entire occupations. However, its greatest near-term impact may instead come from the infrastructure needed to enable AI usage at scale. Callam Pickering, Senior Economist, APAC at Indeed said, “The expansion of India’s data centre capacity is creating a new layer of employment demand as businesses invest in the infrastructure required to support AI and other digital services. Importantly, this is not simply a story about more technology jobs. Data centres are complex, large-scale operations that require workers across engineering, project management, business operations and other functions. As investment matures, this broader employment impact is likely to become increasingly visible in the labourmarket.”
In the 2025-26 financial year, 28% of data centre job postings were in software development, with a further 15.6% in IT infrastructure, operations & support and 7.1% in IT systems & solutions. But a considerable share of data centre job postings were for non-tech occupations.
Management accounts for 9.9% of postings, with industrial engineering (5.8%), sales (5.2%), electrical engineering (3.6%) and project management (3.5%) also ranking highly. This mix reflects the broad range of workers needed to build, operate and maintain large-scale data centre facilities.
Overall hiring activity strengthens in August
In August, Indian job postings on Indeed rose 0.2%. This consolidates last month’s gain to be 7.4% higher than a year ago. While postings have been volatile recently, hiring intensity across India remains elevated, with postings still 85% above pre-pandemic levels.
Indeed’s data captures recruitment by companies and organisations in the formal economy rather than the informal work arrangements that are common throughout India. Consequently, Indeed’s data is not representative of the overall labour market; it skews towards tech, management and sales but does provide useful insights into India’s ongoing economic transition.
Every month, the Indian workforce gradually transitions towards more formal work arrangements. As the nation transitions, job creation in the formal sector is expected to outpace overall employment growth nationwide. This transition is also why job postings trends in India have been stronger than in other Indeed markets. Indian job postings in August were 85% above pre-pandemic levels, easily exceeding other Indeed markets.
Jobs in the formal sector tend to pay better, be more secure and offer more defined career progression and opportunities. Consequently, the ongoing strength in Indeed’s job posting measure is a positive for the Indian workforce.
Recent posting growth mixed across occupations
Over the past three months, job postings increased in almost 80% of occupations, led by sizable gains in childcare (+27%), nursing (+23%), pharmacy (+20%) and physicians & surgeons (+17%). In fact, recent hiring trends have been dominated by healthcare, with dental (+16%) and medical technician (+14%) also growing strongly.
Growth was partially offset by ongoing weakness in tech-related hiring. IT infrastructure, operations & support postings are down 20% over the past three months, with software development (-19%), data & analytics (-14%) and IT systems & solutions (-7.6%) opportunities also declining.
Despite the recent decline, the overall volume of tech postings is still quite healthy, remaining well above pre-pandemic levels, but the sector has clearly been much weaker than the broader national trend recently.
“The strongest recent hiring growth is coming from healthcare and other people-intensive occupations. The gains in nursing, pharmacy, childcare and medical roles point to sustained demand for services that rely on human expertise and cannot be easily substituted by technology.”, added Pickering