In a release sent Thursday, independent think tank IBON Foundation said around 848,000 new and old graduates may be looking for work after this year’s graduation, but only about 256,000 openings may be available to them.
The figure was based on the government’s Labor Force Survey (LFS) in April last year, but IBON said the number of jobs may still be the same this year in the worst-case scenario of the economy being able to generate the same number of jobs.
The figure provided by IBON also does not include graduates who do find jobs but will probably take whatever work is available even if these are not related to their college degrees.
Previous estimates show that three out of five college graduates immediately join the labor force.
With the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) estimating some 542,000 college graduates this year, IBON said an additional 325,000 degree-holding job-seekers will join the labor market.
Those who are going to look for work will then be competing with about 523,000 other unemployed graduates as of January 2010, IBON added.
“This problem is mitigated somewhat if the newly-erupting global crisis early last year was a factor that particularly dragged down job creation at the time," the group said, adding, however, that long-term job prospects of college graduates will still not be secure.
Over one in ten college graduates in the country are unemployed according to IBON, reaching 591,000 out of 5.63 million college graduates in the labor force after the closing of classes in April 2009 based still on LFS data.
The new graduates are also set to join the some 4.3 million jobless Filipinos as of 2009, based on the group’s own estimates.
This is about a third higher than the government’s estimate of only 2.8 million jobless Filipinos as of January this, which even then registered an improvement from 2.9 million recorded last year.
Job-skills mismatch
As reported in GMA News’ Saksi news program, the government’s labor department however said unemployment is caused not by the lack of jobs but by the perceived mismatch between skills possessed by applicants and the demands of employers.
“Isa sa tinitingnan, 'yung pagre-review ng mga curriculum. Nagma-match ba itong pinag-aaralan ng mga estudyante sa aktwal na pangangailangan ng mga industriya," Department of Labor and Employment director for information and publication service Jay Julian told GMA News reporter Ivan Mayrina.
(We’re looking at reviewing the schools’ curriculum, among other things, if what students are taking up matches the demands of the industries.)
The department is thus consulting sectors and industries in its program dubbed Jobsfit, to know which fields are more likely to generate a higher number of jobs.
Based on the department’s records, the top employment generators in 2009 are agribusiness; cyber services including call centers; health, wellness and tourism including nursing and caregiving; hotels and restaurants; and mining.
David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
Creative Writer
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