Bangalore: Over the past couple of quarters, all the IT companies have started witnessing a sharp decline in the attrition levels. This decline in the attrition level is similar to what happened during the 2008 recession when attrition declined as job opportunities fell and employees grew cautious about changing jobs due to the uncertain economic environment, reported Pranav Nambiar for Times of India. Surabhi Mathur-Gandhi, Senior VP at Team-Lease, said that a similar trend is building up now as people are worried that the economic troubles in Europe could increase into a global recession. She also noted that the attrition levels have not yet fallen to the single-digit levels that were witnessed at the height of the previous recession. The attrition rate at Infosys Technologies dropped to 15.6 percent from 17 percent over the past two quarters and at the Tata Consultancy Service it fell to 13.7 percent in the quarter which ended in the month of September, after having risen for several quarters to reach a high of 14.8 percent in the quarter that ended in June. In the same way MindTree's attrition rate fell to 21.7 percent in the latest quarter from 25.6 percent in the month of June quarter. However, Krishnakumar Natarajan, CEO of MindTree told that the fall in attrition rate in their company is due to the proactive HR efforts and employee-retention initiatives that were undertaken by the company. He also added that the clients continue to spend even on discretionary services like they spend beyond what is required for maintaining existing IT infrastructure. R V Ramanan, Executive Director-Global delivery at Hexaware Technologies, said that after the global economy began to pick up following the 2008 recession, attrition levels went up quite sharply as people had more job opportunities. Attrition levels at Hexaware fell to 14.7 percent from 19.6 percent from over the past twp quarters. He also added that the attrition levels are coming back to more realistic levels of 14 to 15 percent. Amitabh Das, CEO of Recruitment Process Outsourcing [RPO] service provider Vati Consulting, told, despite IT companies posting good quarterly results, they all have begun factoring in the possibility of an impending slowdown. Those IT companies which have experience of more than about three years are now slowing down on their lateral hires. This indicates that they are expecting a moderation in growth, as lateral hires are typically ramped up in order to drive growth. The number of lateral hires for Infosys stood at Two thousand three hundred and eighteen employees in the July to September quarter, against its average lateral hiring of Four thousand two hundred and forty six over the previous four quarters. When compared to the previous quarter, TCS has hired 40 percent of its total recruits laterally in the September quarter. Many analysts said that greatest slowdown in movement of employees is at the middle and senior levels. They also told that employees at this level, typically, lose the most from uncertain conditions.