32% IIT Graduates Fail To Get Jobs Through Campus Placements Between 2016 and 2019; Details Here

About a third (32 per cent) of the IIT graduates failed to get a job through campus placements between 2016 and 2019, according to a CNBC-TV18 report citing data accessed through a right to information (RTI) query. This comes when India’s premiere tech institute is already a topic of discussion due to an unfavourable placement scenario.

Tech companies, even including big shots like Google, Meta and Microsoft, have been laying off employees after the COVID-19 pandemic in order to save costs amid weak global economic outlook. The latest RTI data showed the tech jobs problem existed even before COVID-19.

CNBC-TV18 said it sent an RTI query to all 23 IITs.

According to the report, the placement rate is worse in the newer IITs, which have fewer graduates. These campuses include the ones in Palakkad, Bhilai, Ropar, Tirupati, Gandhinagar, Patna, Indore, Hyderabad, and Jodhpur.

However, some IITs have reported an improvement in campus recruitment in 2023. IIT-Guwahati, IIT-Jodhpur, IIT-Hyderabad, IIT-Dhanbad saw an uptick in placements, it added.

Figures suggest that the number of students registering for placements between 2016 and 2023 from these eight large IITs was 87,197, of which 62,452 students got placed after their course was over.

According to the data, 30 per cent students were not placed in 2016, 31 per cent in 2017, 38 per cent in 2018, 29 per cent in 2019, 28 per cent in 2020, 35 per cent in 2021, 20 per cent in 2022. The aggregate percentage of those not placed between 2016 and 2023 stood at 29 per cent.

“IITs attract top-notch companies for placements and hiring. Especially post-COVID era due to huge hiring, there is an imbalance between demand and supply, and IITs are facing challenges in placements. Disruption in technologies and economic slowdown created those challenges much deeper,” the CNBC-TV18 report cited T S Sinha, chief public information officer (CPIO) at IIT-Patna, as saying.

Meanwhile, as per reports recently, in 2024, at IIT Bombay, a significant 36 per cent of the 2,000 students who registered for the 2024 placements are still looking for job offers. However, IIT Bombay later clarified. In a post on X, the premier tech institute said only 6.1 per cent of its students are seeking job opportunities.

As far as layoffs are concerned, in the year 2024 so far, a total of 317 tech companies have laid off 90,916 employees, according to latest data from layoffs.fyi. However, in the entire previous year of 2023, 1,191 tech companies laid off 2,63,180 employees.