India Inc's employee cost crosses Rs one trillion mark

The employee expense bill of Indian corporates has grown tremendously with public sector firms and private sector IT giants retaining their position as the top spenders.

Driven by ever-expanding workforce and salary levels, the employee expense bill of Indian corporates has grown beyond Rs 1,00,000 crore level with public sector companies and private sector IT giants retaining their position as the top spenders.

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The collective employee expenses of companies, whose fiscal year end on March 31 and have announced their full-year results, has grown to Rs 1,14,900 crore, representing a 35 per cent gain over Rs 85,000 crore in the previous fiscal.

However, the combined turnover of these 505 companies, whose annual results are available with stock exchanges, has increased to Rs 14,31,209 crore. This represents a 13 per cent increase from the cumulative turnover of 644 companies last year, which stood at Rs 12,67,348 crore, based on the available data.

The companies spent close to eight per cent of their collective turnover on employee expenses in the last fiscal, up from about six per cent a year ago.

The country's largest lender State Bank of India remained the biggest spender with annual employee cost of about Rs 10,600 crore for the year ended March 31.

Infosys and Wipro, the other two domestic IT giants, incurred employee expenses of Rs 6,314 crore and Rs 5,768 crore respectively.