Temporary hiring in India is set to grow 15% to 20% during the 2026 festive season as companies across retail, e-commerce, quick commerce, logistics, FMCG and consumer durables scale up recruitment to meet rising demand, according to TeamLease Services’ Festive Season Workforce Report 2026.
The report signals a shift away from large-scale volume recruitment towards specialised frontline roles, as firms prepare for a longer festive calendar, faster fulfilment expectations and increasingly omnichannel customer journeys. It analysed anonymised employment records of 60,000 frontline associates deployed during the festive season across the six sectors.
Frontline salaries could rise 8% to 10% in the second half of 2026. Effective take-home pay is expected to increase by a narrower 5% to 8%, partly because of changes arising from new labour laws.
The frontline workforce is also getting younger. The median age fell to 26.7 years in the second half of 2025 from 28.2 years a year earlier. The gender composition stayed broadly unchanged, with men making up around 85% of the workforce and women around 15%.
South and West India are expected to see the strongest hiring momentum, with Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai, Pune and Ahmedabad emerging as key markets. Tier I metros are projected to account for 40.5% of the frontline workforce in 2026, with companies leaning more on incentives, digital onboarding and workforce readiness to sharpen execution during the peak period.
The estimates arrive as India’s broader platform and temporary workforce expands. A separate Redseer report projects the country’s platform-based gig workforce could more than triple to 17 to 21 million by 2030 from over six million currently.
