Friday, April 10, 2009

75,000 more jobs likely to be lost in Indian IT in two years

Mumbai: Close to 75,000 more jobs are likely to be lost in the Indian IT industry this year, according to senior executives of leading software companies, reported The Economic Times.

Infosys board member TV Mohandas Pai estimated that close to 30,000 IT professionals, earning an average salary of Rs 5 lakh per annum, would have lost their jobs between April 2008 and March 2009 in Bangalore. Pai also said that an additional 25,000-30, 000 jobs may be lost in Bangalore alone for fiscal year 2009-2010. "These job losses are due to the fact that many companies have shed excess capacity as the growth rates of industries have decreased. It is possible that a fair number of these people would have found jobs in other industries too during this time at a lesser salary," he said.

Due to the new steps taken by the U.S. president Barrack Obama to deal with outsourcing to India, some technocrats has estimated the extent of possible job-losses in India at about 50,000 in the first half of thisyear itself. These job losses would be across sectors such as IT, ITeS and BPO, they added.

But next year, about 50,000 jobs could be at risk, thinks Ravi Ramu, CFO of realty firm Puravankara and former CFO of Mphasis. What worries him more is the spin off effect that will see a lot more losses. "Every direct job in the BPO is supported by 6 indirect jobs. In reality, the spin-off will be even more negative," he said.

Though IT bigwigs are concerned about the high rate job loss, IT lobbying body Nasscom doesn't think so. According to Nasscom president Som Mittal, earlier the retrenchment was not on such a large scale as attrition was high.


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