Chennai: The services economy of India is getting a boost, thanks to the population. The populace of the country has come to be its USP with their skills and talent. But experts say that the greater part of the people resource remains underutilized, report Shyamala Seetharamanan and S Shyamala of Financial Chronicle. In fact, the visibility of the working employees is absent in many companies and public sector organizations. James Thomas, Country Manager, India operations, Kronos says of the scenario, "Labor is an unnoticed segment and a pressing cost issue in any company irrespective of industry. Hence layoffs become the first step while cutting down costs as tightening the workforce is the 'easiest low hanging fruit'." The big players in the recruitment area comprise of the IT and ITeS sectors. Babuji Abraham, Senior Vice President and Head of People Function, Mindtree adds that the biggest challenge that the industry will face in this year will be of supply-side constraints. The buffer created by the IT companies called the 'bench', which denotes unused workforce, were said to be the largest liability for the said sector in the past year. The consequence of this factor led most companies to restrain hiring, increased utilization levels and quite a few affected entrenchments. It also saw companies that did not lay off employees, increase their utilization rates to historic levels.