AI is creating more jobs than it cuts in India. But there's a catch

Artificial intelligence is expected to change the way millions of people work. In India, that change is already showing up in an unexpected way. Companies are creating more AI-related jobs than the number of jobs being lost to the technology.India saw 83,100 AI-related hires, compared with 31,921 layoffs and attrition linked to AI, according to a Nomura report first accessed by Bloomberg News.That means there were about 2.6 AI-related hires for every job lost or affected.The numbers offer some relief at a time when AI has been blamed for everything from shrinking technology jobs to threatening entry-level employment. But they also point to a more complicated change taking place in India's workforce. The jobs being created by AI are often not the same jobs that are disappearing.Nomura economists Sonal Varma and Si Ying Toh looked at 69 employment-related cases across Asia, mostly covering the period from 2022 to August 2026. They found that India had the largest absolute impact from AI-related hiring and job losses among the countries studied.INDIA 'GROUND ZERO' FOR UNDERSTANDING IMPACT OF AI The economists describe India as “ground zero” for understanding AI's impact on employment. That is because of the country's huge workforce and its dependence on technology services and business-process outsourcing.For years, India's advantage in the global services industry has been its large pool of educated workers.Companies could hire thousands of people to handle customer support, software testing, data processing and other routine tasks for clients around the world.AI is now changing the economics of some of that work.Nomura found that many of the job-loss cases in India involved support teams being replaced by chatbots. At the same time, many of the hiring cases involved IT-services graduates being recruited specifically because of demand linked to AI.So a company may need fewer people to answer routine customer queries, while hiring more people who can build or work with the AI systems handling those queries.That is why the headline numbers can be reassuring without telling the whole story.A worker who loses a customer-support job cannot necessarily move into an AI engineering role. The new job may require a different degree, different skills and years of experience.Nomura points to exactly this problem. The economists say displaced workers rarely move directly into AI engineering roles, meaning the overall hiring numbers can hide the pain felt by people whose jobs disappear.This is particularly important for India because of the country's large number of young people entering the workforce every year.AI HURDLE FOR GRADUATESFor many graduates, the first job is a starting point rather than a destination. A person may begin with relatively basic work, learn how a company operates and gradually move into more specialised and better-paying roles.If AI reduces the number of basic jobs available, that path could become harder.The problem is not necessarily that there will be no jobs. It is that companies may increasingly want workers who already have experience with AI or have specialised skills, rather than large numbers of people who can be trained after joining.Nomura describes this as a two-tier labour market, with demand rising for experienced workers who understand both AI and the business they work in, while demand for some entry-level roles falls.India's experience is part of a broader trend across Asia.Nomura identified 1,30,758 AI-related hires across the region, compared with 60,654 job losses. More than 90% of the hiring was in technology, while about 60% of the job losses were in financial services.The pattern was particularly visible in countries such as India, China and the Philippines, where large business-process outsourcing industries are exposed to automation.Still, Nomura's numbers should not be treated as a complete count of all AI-related jobs created or destroyed. The report is based on 69 reported cases, rather than a survey of every company and worker. The figures are therefore better seen as evidence of a trend than as a measure of the entire labour market.And that trend is not necessarily bad news for India.If Indian workers became more productive with AI, companies could take on more work and move into areas that require greater expertise. New jobs could emerge around developing, managing and applying AI, while existing jobs could become more productive rather than disappear altogether.The challenge will be making sure that workers whose jobs are changed or lost can move into those new opportunities.For now, the numbers tell a surprisingly positive story. India is seeing substantially more AI-related hiring than AI-linked job losses.But the more important question is what happens to the people on either side of those numbers.India may not be heading towards a future where AI simply takes away jobs.It may be heading towards a labour market where there are still plenty of jobs, but the jobs people are trained to get are changing faster than ever.- EndsPublished On: Aug 8, 2026 10:47 IST