The Philippines must generate 14.6 million jobs until 2020 to address the needs of both the unemployed and new job seekers, the World Bank said over the weekend.
World Bank lead economist in the Philippines Rogier van den Brink said the country would face a massive job challenge in the next four years, as millions of young Filipinos were expected to join the labor force.
Van den Brink said of the total number of jobs needed over the next four years, 10 million represented the number of job seekers as of 2012 while the rest pertained to the average 1.15 million jobseekers joining the work force every year.
He said more than 20 percent or 240,000 job seekers entering the workforce every year were expected to find jobs in the formal sector, while 200,000 would land employment overseas. Around 60,000 would not likely find a job. The largest portion of the job seekers would find them in the informal sector.
“More educated people are more unemployed compared to the poor because the the poor cannot afford to be unemployed. That is why underemployment is the more relevant measure for the poor,” van den Brink said.
Latest data from Philippine Statistics Authority showed that underemployment rate worsened to 19.7 percent in the 2016 January labor force survey from 17.9 percent a year ago.
The National Economic and Development Authority said there were 7.7 million underemployed persons, most of whom were wage and salary workers in private establishments.
“Despite the increase in underemployment, positive results in indicators of quality of work, such as the mean hours of work, class of workers and the full-time employment, signal that efforts to foster more remunerative employment are gaining traction,” Economic Secretary Emmanuel Esguerra said.
Esguerra said last week the government should further equip students with industry-relevant competencies and skills to improve the employment situation as the jobless rate in the Philippines eased to 5.6 percent in January from 6.6 percent recorded in January 2015.
Neda noted the broad-based improvement in most regions, across all age groups, almost all educational levels and for both men and women.
It said this translated into about 2.5 million Filipinos who were unemployed as of January. Around 752,000 additional jobs were created between January 2015 and January 2016.
“More jobs were generated for Filipinos in January 2016, which reflects the continued dynamism of the economy,” Neda said.
Data showed the number of employed Filipinos grew 2 percent to 39.2 million with an estimated 752,000 additional jobs created between January 2015 and January 2016.
“Our labor market was boosted by better employment opportunities in the industry and services sectors. This performance also brought the unemployment rate to its second lowest in the decade, with the lowest recorded in October last year,” said Esguerra.