Reflecting a world of economic disruptions and strained geopolitics, India Inc has handed out the lowest pay hike in almost 15 years, excluding the one year of pandemic in 2020. This signals mellowing of India's job market with prospects not looking much brighter for the coming appraisals too. Consulting firms have also flagged that retrenchments on the back of adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), tariff wars and global uncertainty have hit a five-year high this year.

“The increments that we had projected were early on in the year, around February-March. That was before the impact of tariffs and volatile uncertainty... We were expecting the number to be a little lower than what they projected. But that it has fallen below 9% is remarkable. I think 0.1-0.2% fall is usually the case

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