OPINION | Five forces that will decide who hires and who is hired in 2026 and beyond

The skills-and-proof-of-work economy is arriving faster than many hiring systems and institutions are adapting.

There’s no shortage of optimism as India heads into 2026. On growth, digital adoption, entrepreneurship, and workforce scale, the country continues to outpace several global markets. But beneath this momentum, three gaps are widening: a productivity gap between ambition and execution, a readiness gap between technology and skills, and a trust gap between scale and governance.

At LinkedIn, we see these shifts through the behaviour of more than 160 million professionals in India – how they learn, get hired, switch roles, and build businesses. The question ahead is not whether India will grow, but whether we can grow with inclusion, trust, and the kind of intelligence the AI era demands.

As we look ahead, five forces will define how India works, hires, learns, builds, and grows in 2026:

India’s 70M+ Small and Medium Businesses have long been called the backbone of the economy. What’s changing is the kind of backbone they are becoming. Our research with SMBs in India shows that 9 in 10 (95.6%) are already investing in or planning AI adoption. Early AI adoption is helping founders shift from personality-led hustle to process-led execution – formalising hiring, widening access to talent beyond local networks, and embedding tools that bring structure to how they sell, serve, and grow.

The question for 2026 isn’t whether SMBs will use AI, but how deeply they will integrate it. If AI lowers the cost of professionalisation, India’s ‘missing middle’ of resilient mid-sized companies finally has the opportunity to scale. Platforms that enable skills-first hiring and broader access to talent intelligence can help accelerate this shift.

For years, Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities were viewed as feeder markets supplying talent to metros. That lens is ageing fast. On LinkedIn, we’re seeing more experienced professionals move back after metro or overseas stints, supported by remote work and rising local opportunities.

The biggest accelerator of this shift is the expansion of Global Capability Centres (GCCs). These centres are no longer just about headcount. They are taking on deeper ownership, higher-order problem-solving, and innovation charters in cities like Kochi, Vadodara, and Coimbatore. What were once satellite outposts are becoming full-stack capability hubs.

By 2026, the question won’t be where a company is headquartered, but where capability can be built fastest. Location strategies will increasingly follow talent, not the other way around.

India still screens heavily by degrees. But across the labour market, the signals are shifting. Employers are weighing demonstrated skills more than pedigree, professionals are showcasing proof-of-work through certifications and projects, and career paths are becoming less linear as lateral moves and pivots normalise.

The skills-and-proof-of-work economy is arriving faster than many hiring systems and institutions are adapting. The risk is clear: India could develop a highly skilled workforce that still gets filtered out by legacy screening mechanisms if signalling does not evolve quickly enough.

Trust is often framed as culture or brand, but in an AI-heavy India, it is becoming infrastructure. As more work and commerce move online, three questions become decisive: Is this person who they say they are? Do they have the skills they claim? Can I trust what I’m seeing when AI is involved? Without credible answers, speed will not scale.

India has already built digital public infrastructure for identity and payments. The next frontier is skills and professional identity. Verified credentials, transparent platforms, and responsible use of AI will shape how businesses hire, transact, and build relationships at scale. With more than 100 million professionals globally choosing to verify their identities on LinkedIn, we are seeing early signals that trust can grow alongside opportunity rather than slow it down.

India’s scale, diversity, and velocity expose AI systems to more edge cases in weeks than many markets do in years – across languages, behaviours, workflows, and hiring patterns. What looks like complexity is increasingly a competitive advantage. Products that succeed in India’s high-volume environment – from hiring and skills intelligence to fraud detection and recommendations – emerge more resilient globally. Companies that treat India as a proving ground, not just a market, will build systems that travel better and last longer.

Together, these five forces point to a demanding but clear direction. India’s next wave of growth will come from SMBs that operate like institutions rather than short-term enterprises, and from cities and teams that build capability wherever talent is strongest – not only where legacy centres exist. Opportunity will increasingly belong to those who treat skills and proof-of-work as the true currency of employability, and resilience will come from recognising trust as infrastructure rather than a branding exercise. In an era where AI matures fastest in high-variance environments, the organisations that embrace India as a proving ground, not just a market, will gain an innovation edge that is difficult to replicate elsewhere.