The jobs lost during the COVID-19 pandemic and the K-shaped recovery have already shown the structural instability and lack of resilience of the informal sector of the country that employ about 91 per cent of the total workforce. In this backdrop, job cuts in organized sector would be devastating since regular salaried and quality jobs with some social security are available only in the organized sector that employs only about 9 per cent of the workforce of the country.

MNCs are resorting to targeted job cuts across the world. Their India operations are also being downsized. Indian companies have also been doing the same thing. Several companies have already announced hiring freeze and job cuts. About 66 per cent of CEOs in India anticipate a recession and 86 per cent believe that it would impact earnings of the companies by up to 10 per cent, according to KPMG 2022 India CEO Outlook. Moreover, there is a threat of rising interest rates, prices, and inflations, which is likely to impact the overall operation with new challenges.

IT sector is likely to witness the worst since Indian IT companies heavily depend on Europe and the US, where many information technology companies and services have decided to roll back their hiring as well as resorting to job cuts, and asked the Indian companies to cut down on hiring. The hiring and firing patters in this industry show that the sector would cut down its entry level hiring by 20 per cent next year which would impact campus placements in 2023 and 2024. Apart from setback in hiring, Indian IT companies have also recorded a “high level of employees leaving”.

Twitter has been reported to cut nearly 75 per cent of its employee base of 7,500 workers. Ed-tech major BYJU has just announced massive layoffs as part of its restructuring plan. It is expected to lay off around 12,000 employee.

Intel job cuts are likely to affect 20 per cent of workforce and layoffs has already been started in several of Intel’s businesses, especially the sales and marketing sector. It is being done in response to a slowdown in the personal computer industry, which has also been affecting the Indian workforce.

According to a report in Insider, Meta is conducting ‘quiet layoffs’ at Facebook that may lead to at least 12,000 job cuts. As global slowdown bites Meta, twitter, Snap, and other tech firms, Microsoft has also resorted to layoff of its employees. In India, Wipro and Infosys have also announced layoffs. Companies like Apple, Oracle, and Google have also announced a hiring freeze, apart from silent job cuts. Shopee, a popular e-commerce platform, has already shut its operation in India.

IT companies in India have significantly slowed down their hiring process, reducing pay hikes and variable payouts. Several have decided to slowdown replacement hiring, and shifted their focus towards reskilling employees, wherever they want to retain them in jobs.

Wipro, Infosys, and Tech Mahindra recently made headlines for revoking job offer letters of freshers after a 3-6 months delay in their onboarding. Wipro, Infosys, and TCS have issued statements that they would be staggering their recruitments and carrying it out in a phased manner. HCl technologies that is primarily working on its client Microsoft’s news-related products, have also silently laid of hundreds of its workers.

When the global technology company Philips announced 4000 job cuts, its CEO said that it was “difficult, but necessary decision” to improve productivity and increase agility.” Statement of the company said that their sales were affected by operational and supply challenges.

The overall mood prevailing in the Gurugram and Bengaluru indicates that start-up companies in India are bracing for long funding winter and cost-cutting which would ultimately result in large number of job cuts. SoftBank-backed Ola has planned to eliminate 1200 jobs this year to streamline its operation and improve finances. Cryptocurrency exchange Conbase laid off 18 per cent of its global workforce, which is about 1,100 people, including 8 per cent of its total staff strength in India. Better.com laid off 3000 employees from US and India, Unacademy 925, Vedantu 624, Car24 over 600, Trell 300, Lido 200, Furlenco 200, Meesho 200 and so on. It has been reported that Indian startup ecosystem has shed over 12,000 jobs this year chiefly due to market downturn apart from 22,000 workers in the tech-startups. According to Crunchbase, as startups in India keep firing their staff to navigate through the “funding winter’, the country may see more than 60,000 job losses in 2022.

The latest PwC ‘Pulse: Managing business risks in 2022’ report has warned that over 50 per cent of companies will be reducing their overall headcounts. It said that more than 25,000 startup workers have lost jobs since the pandemic began - and more than 12,000 have been fired this year. The report warned that consumer markets and technology, media and telecommunications companies are most likely to invest in automation.

Manufacturing sector’s share has been stagnated at about 15 per cent of the GDP, and the declining employment in this sector has been exacerbated due to rapid increase in automation and digitalization. Pharmaceutical, automobile, malls, grocery, retails, media etc have also witnessed job cuts in thousands.

As the entire organized sector in India require “restructuring and cost management” they are increasingly resorting to job cuts. The phenomenon is more pronounced in the private sector. As part of cost-cutting, both the private and public sector are outsourcing rather than hiring and retaining workers, which increases their vulnerability due to lack of social security coverage in the informal sector or as self-employed majority of which are nothing but unemployment in disguise. It indicates hard times ahead for job seekers at a time when unemployment rate is about 8 per cent in the end of October 2022 much above 6.43 per cent last month.