Small towns boom: Tier-2 cities lead hiring surge; metros fall behind in talent race

NEW DELHI: Small cities and towns witnessed a crisp surge successful hiring - much than treble the gait seen successful metros - driven by robust maturation successful the BFSI, manufacturing, retail, and IT sectors.

This inclination marks a important displacement towards decentralised economical growth, underscoring the accelerated emergence of tier-2 cities arsenic emerging endowment hubs, with opportunities present expanding beyond accepted municipality centres. Job openings successful tier-2 cities roseate astir 42%, compared to a 19% summation successful tier-1 cities, according to the Randstad Talent Insights Report 2025 shared exclusively with TOI.The archetypal variation of the report, drawn from information successful the six-month play - Sept 2024 to Feb 2025-captures insights crossed six cardinal industries: banking, fiscal services & security (BFSI), manufacturing and automotive, IT, pharma, healthcare & beingness sciences (PHL), retail, FMCG & FMCD, and vigor and utilities.

Anjali Raghuvanshi, main radical serviceman & elder manager (business innovation) astatine Randstad India, a endowment company, said, " Our study indicates that tier-1 cities support a robust hiring outlook crossed each surveyed sectors. More interestingly, tier-2 and 3 cities are rapidly gaining ground, emerging arsenic hiring hotspots, frankincense reflecting the immense imaginable and wide organisation of endowment crossed the country.

The awesome maturation trajectory of these cities tin beryllium credited to their increasing economical relevance, a dependable pipeline of skilled endowment from prime acquisition institutions, and a concentrated propulsion towards infrastructure development."Among tier-1 cities, Bengaluru solidified its enactment successful endowment demand, exhibiting higher hiring numbers and a greater stock of request crossed each acquisition levels and sectors.

Mumbai further strengthened its dominance successful the vigor and utilities assemblage astatine the mediate and elder levels. It besides reinforces its presumption arsenic a cardinal endowment hub crossed each levels for the BFSI, retail, FMCG, and FMCD industries.Among tier-2 cities, Chandigarh made an impactful emergence to apical rankings and witnessed surge successful hiring crossed each industries astatine antithetic levels. Gandhinagar and Aurangabad joined the database of tier-2 cities successful this edition.

During the period, Vadodara showed a large surge successful hiring numbers, rankings, and stock of request astatine each levels successful the vigor & utilities, PHL, and automotive & manufacturing industries.Further, nether the BFSI sector, concern banking, concern operations, and concern expert roles instrumentality the apical 3 spots successful presumption of hiring request crossed each levels. The relation of a cyber fraud expert entered the accomplishment portfolio for the archetypal clip to diagnostic successful the Top 20 skills. With much precocious cyber frauds successful the integer age, the relation has opened up occupation opportunities, some successful tier-1 and tier-2 cities, the study adds. In the manufacturing and automotive sector, accumulation managers, proviso chain/logistics professionals, and operations absorption specialists proceed to predominate the hiring demand.