Budget 2023: HR industry expects labour codes, focus on formal job creation

The Human Resource industry anticipates various measures from the upcoming Budget 2023, that will be beneficial for employees, the employment process, for job development and will address the skill-gap challenge in the country.

The Indian economy is on the road to recovery after the Covid-19 pandemic significantly affected the country's economic growth. Industry players are hoping that the ensuing budget will provide a much-needed boost to the HR sector that will help the industry to get back on track.

According to leading HR services provider Randstad India, the broad industry asks for the HR sector is the roll out of labour codes, focus on formal job creation, industry Status for Staffing Industry and enhancing skilling initiatives for the youth.

It would help if the central and state governments set up help desks in the initial phases of rolling out the labour codes to ease the implementation by the industry, it said.

"The union budget 2023 should aim at further enhancing the formal job creation opportunities in the country.

"Though the government has been providing impetus towards job creation through initiatives like the PLI Scheme, Make in India, Atmanirbhar Bharat, etc., the employment challenge remains. It is important that we continue the momentum to create new job opportunities across sectors," said Viswanath PS MD & CEO Randstad India.

On the skill-gap challenge in the country, he said, "there is an urgent need to bridge this skilling gap if we need to provide meaningful work opportunities to India's youth. The government has already announced several initiatives on this front through the Skill India mission, Desh Stack E-portal, Digital University, etc. we need to further invest in skilling."

According to the India Skills Report 2022 (done by Wheebox in partnership with AICTE and CII), only 48.7 per cent of total youth in India is employable. This means almost 1 out of 2 Indian youths are not employable.

Randstad India also called for "Industry Status" for the staffing industry.

"It plays a critical role in fostering jobs and thereby economic growth and development. The staffing industry enables the creation of more work opportunities and reduces the time required in finding jobs," Viswanath said.

The HR industry is also anticipating measures like -- proposing a timeline for the issuance of Income Tax Refund, one-time GST correction window for initial years of GST implementation and centralised registration under GST for large service providers among others.