India is hiring more for AI than it is laying off, says Nomura

India is hiring more workers than it is laying off due to artificial intelligence, according to a report by Nomura Holdings. The report identified India as a key test case for assessing AI's impact on employment.

The report stated that India, known as the world's back office for many global companies, is experiencing the largest absolute impact from AI across layoffs, hiring freezes and recruitment. This makes the country ground zero for evaluating the technology's effect on jobs.

Between 2022 and August 2026, India recorded 83,100 AI-related hires compared with 31,921 layoffs and attrition, based on an analysis of 69 anecdotes across Asia. Most job losses involved support teams replaced by chatbots, while most hiring was for IT services graduates recruited to meet AI-driven demand.

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The report highlighted that AI adoption is creating a two-tier labour market in countries like India and South Korea. It is reducing demand for entry-level workers while increasing the need for experienced employees with a deeper understanding of business operations.

Across Asia, AI-related hiring totalled 130,758 jobs during the study period, with over 90% in the technology sector. In comparison, 60,654 jobs were lost, around 60% of them in financial services.

Nomura economists said the findings challenge the narrative of widespread job destruction caused by AI. They suggested that, at least in the early stages of AI adoption, job creation is more than offsetting displacement. This trend is visible not only in India and China but also in the Philippines, where business process outsourcing is a major source of employment.

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However, the report cautioned that the overall figures mask uneven impacts across the workforce. Displaced workers rarely move into AI engineering or similar roles, meaning the benefits and losses are not evenly distributed.

Nomura also noted that its findings should be viewed as an indication of broader trends rather than absolute employment numbers, as Asia's labour markets remain fragmented and the analysis was based on news reports.