As many as 36,000 rural youth have been issued job offer letters during the past eight months by various companies, from manufacturing to service, courtesy a World Bank sponsored scheme District Poverty Initiative Project. Since the placement agencies do not offer services in the non-skilled labour segment, companies hire non-skilled workers through references and relatives of the existing workforce.
'I think some of us, like Mukesh Ambani, myself and those of us who head industrial units, ought to really focus on what we can really do to make the world a safer place, maybe 50 or 100 years from now.' 'For instance, how can we deal with climate change and global warming, right now?' 'The effects of it may not be felt now; in fact, we may pay a price for it today, but it will help the generations to follow.'
"We know that the ability to speak English or French is a very, very strong predicator of success. If you come to this country and you are unable to speak one of the two official languages, you may starve. In fact, if you are coming into a profession, the level of language you have to have is that much higher to be able to succeed," says Doug Kellam, spokesperson, Citizenship and Immigration Canada.
At present, no harmonised set of admission rules and procedures apply across the European Union. EU has some 27 member states and each state has different regimes for work permit application, making the movement of high-skilled and specialised workers of a company within EU cumbersome.
Under these reforms, the H-1B programme will prioritise those workers who are offered the highest wage, ensuring that the highest-skilled applicants are admitted, the White House said.
As artificial intelligence (AI) threatens to replace jobs, a new report from Microsoft has suggested that Indian employees are caught between a fear of losing jobs and an opportunity to reduce workload by delegating tasks to technology. Microsoft's Work Trend Index 2023 found that while 74 per cent of Indian employees are worried about AI replacing their jobs, 83 per cent would delegate as much work to it as possible, to help lessen their workloads. More than three in four Indian workers would be comfortable using AI not just for administrative tasks (86 per cent), but also for analytical work (88 per cent), and for the creative aspects of their role (87 per cent).
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has asked his Australian counterpart Scott Morrison to help ease strict quarantine rules to allow the families of England's cricketers to tour with the players during the upcoming Ashes series.
Indian immigrants, with permanent residency rights in the United Kingdom, have complained of harassment and 'treatment like criminals' by British immigration officers on returning to the country from trips abroad, a forum representing highly-skilled workers has claimed.
Assuming we still have a Modi-led majority government after May 2024, there is no guarantee that reforms will move at anything more than a snail's pace, though we must be thankful even for that, notes R Jagannathan.
'We cannot leave our entire unorganised sector to the vagaries of market forces.'
As the triangular political contest in Telangana intensifies, many believe that for the regional major BRS, it is a battle for survival after being routed in the assembly polls held late last year. What is haunting the party this time is the scams, the 10-year anti-incumbency factor, and family dominance in the party.
Indian economy, dubbed the fastest growing major economy in the world, is faced with the single most important pressure point of job creation, says former RBI Governor Raghuram G Ranjan as he makes a strong case for improvement of human capital through skill development. Talking about the book 'Breaking the mould: Reimagining India's economic future', written jointly by him and Rohit Lamba, assistant professor of economics at Pennsylvania State University, Rajan said one of the greatest strength of India is its human capital of 1.4 billion and the question is "how do you make it strong?" The nation needs to create jobs at every level going along the path of development, said Rajan, presently Katherine Dusak Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at Chicago Booth, USA.
To prevent that, Obama said, he wants to give the school and teachers the resources they need to train and educated students in the US.
'We are called artists, just like the film people and dancers and actors. But there's a very little value to what we do as artists.'
The investment climate is going well in India and the private sector should skill their workforce in the interest of its business, Chief Economic Advisor K V Subramanian said on Thursday asserting that he does not foresee any difficulty in demand and supply of the workforce. Addressing 'Times Network India Economic Conclave', Subramanian further said job creation is part of the virtuous cycle that starts with private investments flowing into the country resulting in production, growth, job creation and increase in aggregate demand which in turn leads to more investments in the economy. The investment climate is going well in India. Other things will follow, though with a lag...it is for the private sector to start recognising that it is in their own business interest that they should skill their workforce. This, in turn, will raise the average level of skills in India," he said.
Lower cost and easier termination may well be among the reasons that companies seek to have employees on contract. The share of employees on contract has increased to 57.3 per cent of the total workforce this year as compared to 53.7 per cent in the previous year.
This measure to double the number of temporary visas to H-1B skilled-workers to 115,000 -- with an option of raising the cap 20 per cent more each year -- was buried in the Senate's giant 300-page Immigration Bill that got approved 12-6 on Tuesday.
Malaysia's Human Resources Minister S Subramaniam has said that the country could review a ban imposed on the recruitment of foreign workers.
The employment structure of India's organised manufacturing sector has undergone substantial changes over the last decade.
Work laws in India, including stringent permits and bureaucratic redtape and delays in getting jobs are discouraging foreigners seeking employment in the country, which is at present suffering a severe shortage of skilled workers, says a new study.
The new programme could bring in longer lead times and paperwork
The US government should not only look at salary, but also focus on skills while making immigration reforms
Let's take a look at companies that issue most visas.
Indian IT professionals would gain from new German emigration laws that have vastly eased the entry of skilled personnel into the European country.
With many of his close associates leaving his side, it is virtually a lone battle for Congress stalwart Kamal Nath to help his parliamentarian son Nakul Nath win from Chhindwara for a second time amid the Bharatiya Janata Party's aggressive push to wrest the seat.
The current H-1B minimum wage of USD 60,000 was established in 1989 and since then has remained unchanged.
Mohammed Shami possesses a rare ability of landing the ball in an upright seam position every single time and no coach in the world can create such a fast bowling "artist", gushed India's bowling coach Paras Mhambrey.
A more rigorous training in core skills is required to boost the engineering talent in the country, instead of a varnish of 'soft skills', says Ajit Balakrishnan.
With visas set to max out quickly again, tech companies want more. Amid rising joblessness, does America need more skilled foreign workers?
In less than a week of Donald Trump being sworn in as the 45th US President, the "H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act" was introduced to prioritise American workers and restore fairness in visa programmes for skilled workers.
The State Department has proposed not to issue temporary business visas for H-1B speciality occupations which allowed several companies to send their technology professionals for a short stay to complete jobs on site in the US, a move which could affect hundreds of Indians. The proposal, if finalised, will eliminate any misconception that the "B-1 in lieu of H policy" provides an alternative avenue for foreign professionals to enter the US to perform skilled labour that allows, and potentially even encourages them and their employers to circumvent the restrictions and requirements relating to the H non-immigrant classification established by Congress to protect the US workers, the State Department said.
I hope those who underestimate Rajeev Chandrasekhar will be proved wrong in this fight for Thiruvananthapuram's future, notes Rajeev Srinivasan.
Indian outsourcers file the most applications for temporary H-1B visas. Are they using them to train staff for jobs abroad?
Recognition of educational qualifications acquired abroad will send a strong message to foreign specialists and skilled workers that 'you are highly valued, appreciated and respected in this country,' Federal Minister for Education Annette Schavan said.
In a move that will benefit a significantly large number of Indian technology professionals, the US is set to begin a pilot programme for domestic renewal of certain categories of H-1B visas in December. The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise. Technology companies depend on it to hire tens of thousands of employees each year from countries like India and China.
The study paper -- 'Skills Gaps in the Indian Logistics Sector' -- estimates that currently India has only some 3 million truck drivers for medium and heavy commercial vehicles. Even if 50 per cent of all drivers in India are to be trained, almost 125 institutes of the size and scale of the existing one in Namakkal will be required in the next 7-8 years, says the paper.
Two influential US Senators have renewed the campaign against the biggest users of H-1B visa workers in the US, including Indian heavyweights Infosys, Wipro, Satyam and Tata Consultancy Services. They fired off a missive to these companies asking how they employed professional and skilled workers, majority of whom hail from India.
Upholding the revision petition filed by the highly skilled migrants programme forum against retrospective changes effected to HSMP in November 2006, the high court in its judgement said: "The old scheme constituted an integrated and entire programme." It said that it was 'not open to the government to alter the terms and conditions upon which the pre-arranged stages were to be implemented.'
