India’s Middle Class Faces Squeeze as White-Collar Job Growth Stalls

India’s white-collar job engine, which powered urban middle-class growth for over a decade, is rapidly losing momentum, according to Saurabh Mukherjea, founder of Marcellus Investment Managers. Speaking on a recent podcast, Mukherjea said annual white-collar job growth has collapsed from around 11% to just 1%, marking a sharp break from the past when professional employment doubled every six years. He warned that this stagnation reflects a structural shift rather than a temporary slowdown.

The slowdown is most acute in technology and customer experience roles, which together employ nearly 8 million people and form the backbone of India’s private-sector white-collar workforce. Citing a joint NASSCOM–BCG–NITI Aayog report, Mukherjea said up to 2 million jobs—almost a quarter of the workforce in these segments—could disappear by 2031 in a worst-case AI disruption scenario. India’s IT sector, once growing at double-digit rates, has slipped into contraction, with job numbers declining as automation, artificial intelligence, and weak global demand reshape hiring.

Mukherjea cautioned that the impact will spread beyond IT to sectors such as media, finance, legal services, and logistics, intensifying pressure on the urban middle class. With job postings already down sharply and companies rethinking labour-intensive growth models, slower employment growth threatens wages, consumption, and social mobility. “This is no longer a future risk—it’s unfolding now,” Mukherjea said, stressing the need for policy and corporate responses before the damage becomes long-lasting.

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