Tech labour glut and skill mismatch

A software job market can look crowded and empty at the same time. In India, companies are getting far more applications for each tech opening, while in the United States many employers still say the exact people they want are hard to find. (thehindubusinessline.com, thecgo.org) In India, active tech job openings in January 2026 were about 1.03 lakh, or 103,000, down 24 percent from a year earlier. That is less than half the 2.6 lakh, or 260,000, openings seen in January 2022 during the post-Covid hiring surge. (thehindubusinessline.com) That drop came after companies staffed up heavily in 2021 and 2022 and then stopped needing so many general-purpose engineers. Xpheno told The Hindu BusinessLine that many tech and engineering teams were already fully staffed, and active openings in those functions fell 37 percent. (thehindubusinessline.com) The hiring that is still happening is moving to narrower jobs. Forrester told The Hindu BusinessLine that employers are recalibrating toward artificial intelligence, data analytics, cloud architecture, cybersecurity, and other roles tied directly to revenue or delivery. (thehindubusinessline.com) That is why the same country can have flat information technology hiring and booming artificial intelligence hiring at once. Naukri said India’s information technology sector was flat in March 2026, while artificial intelligence and machine learning hiring rose 37 percent year over year in March and 45 percent for the full fiscal year. (naukri.com) The strongest demand is also clustering at the top of the pay ladder, not the broad middle. Naukri said artificial intelligence and machine learning roles in the 50 lakh rupee and above salary band rose 55 percent year over year, while the 40 to 49 lakh rupee band rose 40 percent and the 30 to 39 lakh rupee band rose 41 percent. (naukri.com) Pay is not rising everywhere with the same force. TeamLease said average salary hikes across Indian industries for fiscal year 2025 to 2026 are forecast at 6.2 percent to 11.3 percent, with employers shifting toward skill-based hiring instead of broad wage inflation. (group.teamlease.com) The United States is showing a different version of the same split. A 2022 policy paper from the Center for Growth and Opportunity noted that the country had about 918,000 unfilled tech jobs in 2019 even though computer occupations paid a median $91,350 in 2020 and software developers had a 1.9 percent unemployment rate in 2017. (thecgo.org) Now layoffs are adding more people to the market without fixing that mismatch. Challenger data reported by Bloomberg showed United States tech employers announced 18,720 job cuts in March 2026, taking first-quarter tech layoffs above 52,000, the highest first-quarter total since 2023. (bloomberg.com) Some startups are using those cuts as a recruiting window. GeekWire reported that startup executives described laid-off workers from large companies as “dream candidates,” because layoffs at bigger firms suddenly made senior designers, engineers, and operators available to smaller employers. (geekwire.com) But a bigger labor pool does not automatically produce the skills employers want next. The Center for Growth and Opportunity paper says tech workers face a constant threat of becoming obsolete because tools change fast, and companies often respond by demanding newer specialties instead of retraining large numbers of existing staff. (thecgo.org) So the glut is real, and the shortage is real too. There are too many applicants for broad software roles, too few people with recent artificial intelligence, data, and cloud experience, and a growing number of employers trying to buy precision instead of volume. (thehindubusinessline.com, naukri.com, thecgo.org)