Tier-2 Cities Take the Lead: Randstad 2025 Report Reveals India’s Job Market Shift

India’s job market is going through a significant transformation with tier-2 cities emerging as massive employment centres. According to the Randstad Talent Insights Report 2025 job openings increase in tier-2 cities was 42%, which is greater than double the 19% increase in metropolitan cities. The data from September 2024 to February 2025 suggest that we are moving toward decentralised economic development.

This increase is clear in many areas including the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) sectors, IT, manufacturing, retail, pharma and energy. As hiring is speeding up in small towns, new opportunities are being offered beyond the traditional metro areas.

Anjali Raghuvanshi, Chief People Officer at Randstad India said that even though tier-1 cities such as Bengaluru and Mumbai continue to dominate overall hiring, tier-2 and tier-3 cities are rising quickly. “They are showing themselves as the next hiring hotspots which reflects the depth of the talent pool and distribution of talent across the nation,” she said.

Bengaluru continues to be an industry powerhouse across tier-1 cities and Mumbai has a relative strength in the energy and utilities industry. In tier-2 cities, hiring activity in Chandigarh has increased sharply. There are also newcomers to the category including Gandhinagar and Aurangabad. Demand remains strong in Vadodara also particularly in the automotive, PHL and energy sectors.

Roles in high demand for BFSI have included investment banker, business analyst and cyber fraud analyst with increasing focus also given to digital security. In manufacturing and automotive there has been strong hiring motivation for production managers, supply chain professionals and operations roles.

The change indicates a different employment map for India with identifiable growth centres ‘s promising greater job creation flexibility across all tiers as opposed to metropolitans alone’ .