ECONOMY
AI-driven job gains outnumber losses, cites a counter-narrative Nomura study
- IBJ Bureau
- Aug 08, 2026
India, the world’s back office for many global companies, is emerging as a key test case for artificial intelligence’s (AI) impact on employment, with AI-related hiring outpacing job losses so far, according to Nomura Holdings.
The country’s sheer scale means that it is seeing the “largest absolute impact” from AI across layoffs, hiring freezes and recruitment, making it the “ground zero” for assessing the technology’s effect on jobs, Nomura economists Sonal Varma and Si Ying Toh have written in a report analysing 69 anecdotes across Asia, mostly from 2022 through August 2026.
India recorded 83,100 AI-related hires during the period compared with 31,921 layoffs and attrition, according to the report.
“Most firing cases are support teams replaced by chatbots, while most hiring cases are of IT services graduates that firms explicitly credit to AI demand,” the economists have said.
Across Asia, AI-related hiring totalled 1,30,758 jobs during the study period, with more than 90 per cent of those positions in technology.
By comparison, 60,654 jobs were lost, about 60 per cent of them in financial services.
The finding “runs counter to the narrative of massive job losses due to growing AI adoption” and suggests that at least in the early stages of the AI revolution, job creation is more than offsetting displacement, the economists have noted.
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