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Not pessimistic on IT jobs, startups should help: Patel

Reserve Bank Governor Urjit Patel on Thursday said he is not "overly pessimistic" about employment scenario in the IT sector, pointing out that mushrooming startups can compensate for job losses.

The comments came almost simultaneously with industry lobby Nasscom guiding towards a slowdown in export revenue growth at 7-8 per cent in 2017-18 as against the 8.6 per cent achieved last fiscal.

There have been reports pointing to big IT firms laying off people and going slow on hiring.

"I think we don't have to be overly pessimistic at this stage," Patel said at an IMC event here amid growing concern over jobs in the $160-billion IT sector.

"While there could be pressure on employment in some of the IT sectors, it is not necessarily in terms of literally a job destruction, but may be the growth rate is affected by what is happening. The number of startups in that same space is almost compensating for most of this," he said.

Patel said there is a "contradiction" between what the reports say and what he hears from the industry.

"When you talk to businesses themselves, I rarely hear about jobs destruction," he said.

In the past few months a number of IT majors such as Infosys, Wipro, Cognizant, IBM and Tech Mahindra have either announced or are believed to be mulling job cuts.
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