EY India released a report called “Future of Pay: Evolving pay strategy in a digital-first world” and you probably missed it but don’t worry, we saw it and we’re definitely going to talk about it.
First of all, you should know it was uploaded as “ey-future-of-pay-report-2024-25-final-with-score-no-new.pdf.” At least there’s only one ‘final’ in there.
Here’s the press release if you don’t want to read the whole report. If you do want to read the whole report, we’ve embedded it at the bottom of this article. The main bits:
6 in 10 Indian employers are keen to explore the potential of AI for employee rewards and compensation strategies over the next three years, as per the findings of EY ‘Future of Pay 2025’ report. The third edition of the report explores India’s dynamic talent landscape driven by technological advancements, shifting employee expectations, and the growing importance of flexibility.
The report reveals that India Inc. is set to witness an average salary increase of 9.4% in 2025, a slight moderation from the 9.6% recorded in 2024. Overall employee attrition rates dropped from 18.3% in 2023 to 17.5% in 2024.
“Wait, that’s talking about Indian employers in general,” we hear you griping. “Y’all are clickbaiting again!” Keep reading, chucklehead.
As per the report findings, the e-commerce sector is expected to see the highest salary increments of 10.5% in 2025, driven by the rapid expansion of digital commerce, rising consumer spending, and technological advancements. The financial services sector follows closely, with projected salary increments of 10.3% in 2025, driven by demand for fintech specialists, digital banking experts, and cybersecurity professionals.
The report also highlights salary increments in Global Capability Centres (GCC), projected at 10.2% in 2025, up from 10.0% in 2024, as companies continue investing in digital transformation and automation. However, IT and IT-enabled services sectors are experiencing a slowdown in salary growth, impacted by automation, cost optimization, and hiring slowdowns. IT sector salary increments are expected to decline from 9.8% in 2024 to 9.6% in 2025, while IT-enabled services will see a moderation from 9.2% in 2024 to 9% in 2025, underscoring a strategic shift towards efficiency and leaner workforce structures. Meanwhile, automotive, pharmaceuticals, and manufacturing sectors continue to display steady compensation trends.
Global Capability Centers (GCCs) = the offshore offices. A Hindustan Times article from August of last year states that India is set to have 2,550 GCCs with a market value of $110 billion by 2030, several of which belong to Big 4 firms but are not exclusive to professional services. EY just opened up a new 22,000 sq. ft Global Delivery Services (GDS) office in Coimbatore, a so-called two-tier city in Tamil Nadu (where?) that’s cheaper than the big city centers where GCCs have been set up for a while now. The global EY GDS headcount is now more than 74,000 professionals, approximately 18.5% of EY’s total global headcount of about 400,000 people.
According to Business Standard, Deloitte India had more than 500 ‘tech architects’ as of last year. “With the overall demand for architects across our clients growing at 20-25 per cent, Deloitte India has robust hiring plans in place to meet these growing demands,” said Deepti Sagar, chief people and experience officer at Deloitte India.
Meanwhile, EY India’s headcount grew from 4,200 in 2020-21 to approximately 11,000 people in 2023-24. “Our proposition for GCCs is a strong combination of business consultants and technology architects who work together to solve their business problems and, in many cases, lead their end-to-end transformation needs,” said Ranjan Biswas, EY India leader for Technology, Media and Entertainment, Telecom (TMT) and South region, to Business Standard.
The average cost of a full-time equivalent worker at a GCC was $22,939 including salary (85% of that amount) and other overhead according to an EY report published last year that we covered here. That figure has increased 27% from 2019 to 2023 and is expected to rise by 30% from 2023 to 2030. See more:
Quick note to India workers: You guys realize they’re going to automate you out of a job the minute it’s feasible to do so right? Firms are also sniffing around the frontiers of Africa, you’re going to be in the same situation workers in the UK, US, and Australia are if they work cheaper than you. Just sayin.
Anyway, full report here. Or should we say full report final-with-score-no-new.
SCORE is EYs internal process of having external material reviewed by marketing, legal, risk management.
Each document, after it’s been fully approved gets a unique ID (in this case, EYIN2502-018) which has the country (IN), year and month (2502) and document ID (018). County GL is”global”.
They maintain a CRC checksum for each document at the time of approval so if you change anything in the PDF document, they will know internally that a change was made subsequent to SCORE approval.