New Delhi: The share of the information technology sector in the overall corporate profits hit a 21-quarter (five years) low of 9.7% in the January-March quarter, Mint reported, citing analysis of the latest corporate earnings data.The signs of a slowdown were visible as the sector is grappling with a global slowdown and banking crisis.The compilation was based on the recent earnings data collected from Capitaline databasefor 1,252 BSE-listed companies. This included 66 companies from the IT and IT-enabled services space, the report said.The IT sector’s contribution peaked in 2020, during the pandemic, when firms went on a digital shopping spree, the report added.The IT sector, together with banking and financial services, cornered 67% of the corporate profits in the quarter ended March 2020. But now it’s down to 42%, the report said.The topline growth of the sector slowed to 12% from a year earlier from 26.5% in the quarter ended March 2022, it added.Top technology firms have been hit by the global slowdown and are cutting down on hiring.These companies have been laying off employees at a rapid rate, similar to the level seen during the COVID-19 pandemic’s initial impact on the global economy in 2020.Forbes reported that India’s top four IT companies saw a net addition of just 1,940 employees in the third quarter, the lowest in the last eight quarters. Active job volumes in the tech sector have dropped by nearly 50% on a year-on-year basis, it added.The last two years saw ambitious hiring, especially due to the pandemic. “Everyone wanted to go digital at the time, and there was a huge demand for tech professionals, which led to a lot of hiring. I believe this is a form of load-shedding,” Niraj Hutheesing, founder and director of software company Cygnet Infotech, told Forbes.