India Inc's salary & wage growth slows amid muted demand

With a revenue growth slowdown hurting their margins and earnings, Indian companies seem to be seeking to rationalise their employee costs.

- KRISHNA KANT

The combined salary & wage expenses of the country's listed companies grew just 4.8 per cent in the January-March quarter of 2025 (Q4FY25) over a year earlier—in single digits for a fifth straight quarter, and the slowest rate in at least 17 quarters.

For comparison, these companies' combined salary & wage expenses had increased 6.1 per cent year-on-year in the same quarter of FY24 and 5.1 per cent in Q3FY25.

The 457 listed companies in our sample which have declared their results for Q4FY25 together spent around ₹2.46 trillion on their employees in the quarter, up from ₹2.45 trillion in Q4FY24 and ₹2.38 trillion in Q3FY25.

Our sample has 25 companies that are part of the benchmark Nifty 50 index (26 if we include Bajaj Finance, a subsidiary of Bajaj Finserv, which is also an index company).

The combined market capitalisation of the companies in this sample had a combined market capitalisation (mcap) of around ₹199.5 trillion on Wednesday—47 per cent of the combined mcap of all BSE-listed companies that day.