THE BOOMING economy and the government’s massive infrastructure program are generating a lot of employment opportunities for Filipino workers. The Duterte administration’s flagship “Build, Build, Build” program requires an estimated 2.5 million workers in the construction industry.
In the private sector, the continuing construction of shopping malls, which is driven by growing consumption and higher purchasing power of consumers, is expected to increase demand for employees in the retail business, including accountants.
In the next three years alone, mall developers are planning to add as much as 630,000 square meters of shopping space, despite the growth of the e-commerce retail business.
For instance, my Vista Land & Lifescapes, Inc. is targeting to have 60 malls by 2030, a three-fold increase from the current 22 malls. This year alone, we plan to spend P50 billion for capital expenditure, a significant portion of which will be used to expand our malls’ gross shopping space to 1.4 million square meters, from the current one million square meters.
Of course, other players in the mall sector are pursuing their respective expansion plans in different parts of the country, which will open up more employment opportunities.
Other sectors of the real estate industry, like housing and office buildings for the business process outsourcing (BPO), are also in expansion mode, as the Philippines continues to realize its economic potential.
That’s the good news. As I said a few weeks ago, it’s a nice kind of problem.
But the not-so-good news is that as of January 2018, the country’s unemployment rate stood at 5.3 percent, and the underemployment rate at 18.0 percent. The unemployment is lower than the 6.6 percent in January 2017 but it still translates to 2.761 million jobless members of the labor force. The latest underemployment rate is up from 16.3 percent in January 2017, and translates to 7.498 million workers who are still looking for additional jobs.
Also, in a few months, more than a million students will graduate and join the army of jobseekers.
So we have a paradox: millions of workers looking for jobs, while many employers can’t find the workers they need. In addition, local companies must also compete with other countries, which prefer to hire Filipinos because of their skills and work ethics.
The main reason for this paradox is the problem of job mismatch: the education and training of applicants do not match the requirements of the jobs available. According to the Labor Force Survey (LFS), 21.9 percent of the unemployed as of January 2018 were college graduates, 13.7 percent were college undergraduates, and 29.4 percent have completed junior high school.
A few years ago, I emphasized the need for the educational institutions to align their courses to the demand of industries, as a solution to the mismatch problem.
Today, we are pressed for time, because the need for workers is becoming urgent. The government must consider adopting a massive re-training program for the unemployed, as well as returning overseas Filipino workers (OFWs).
The government’s Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) is targeting as many as 100,000 enrollees in construction-related courses alone to cope with the demand in the infrastructure program as well as in private construction projects.
Aside from construction-related courses, TESDA last month registered a total of 192,654 enrollees as new scholars under the agency’s Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) program. The top five in-demand courses for students were driving, computer systems servicing, bread and pastry production, cookery and dressmaking.
TESDA is doing a laudable job, but the demand for workers, particularly in the construction industry, will require a more significant expansion of training programs, which will also benefit the millions of Filipinos still unemployed.
For this effort, even the private sector must contribute its share. We have to take advantage of the big and growing demand for workers – both professionals and non-professionals – as we move the economy forward. We need to focus on bridging the gap between labor availability and the industries’ demands.
We all know that increasing employment, which means reducing the number of jobless Filipinos, will also help us solve another persistent national problem: poverty.
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This piece first came out in Business Mirror on March 19, 2018 under the column “The Entrepreneur.” For comments/feedback e-mail to: mbv.secretariat@gmail.com or visitwww.mannyvillar.com.ph./PN
