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AI is transforming India’s job market, boosting productivity and shifting hiring to skills like prompt engineering and generativeAI.
AI Reshapes India’s Job Market Amid Rising Demand for Advanced Skills
A new study has revealed that AI (Artificial Intelligence) is reshaping India’s professional landscape, with hiring priorities shifting toward skills profiles that combine domain expertise with AI and data-related technical skills.
The report titled “AI and Jobs: This Time is no different” by ICRIER underlined the most in-demand skills are prompt engineering and generative AI capabilities (68%), followed by data analytics (36%) and data science and machine learning (35%).
The report, however, cautioned that Indian companies are failing to train their workforce in AI-relevant skillsets. Although most firms are investing in internal awareness and workforce reskilling initiatives, formal AI training remains limited.
It said that only 4% of IT firms have trained more than half of their staff in AI-related skills. “Upskilling efforts are constrained mainly by costs, shortage of good trainers, and organisational readiness,” it added.
AI Increases Productivity
The report highlighted that AI has increased productivity in the operations. 38% of divisions saw higher output with fewer people, said the study. In some cases, the costs of operations dropped while output increased.
It added that the most affected jobs were data entry, clerical and back-office processing, followed by manual testing, manual quality assurance, and entry-level programming. Creative production, customer support, and administrative functions are also
experiencing noticeable declines, reflecting the growing use of generative AI and automation tools.
Overall, the pattern suggests that AI is primarily displacing standardized, repetitive tasks, while its impact may be gradually extending to more skilled roles.
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February 15, 2026, 11:15 IST
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