The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
In just three weeks, many graduates will find themselves unable to find employment due to a mismatch between the skills they have and the jobs that are available. This stark reality that faces over a million graduates is a sharp reminder of the need for an educational platform that would address the inefficiencies in education in the country.
This economic reality, the lack of the required qualifications, even for those who have finished four years of education, is something the government must address if it is to make sure graduates are employable.
As it is, the statistics on the number of graduates and the available jobs are worrisome. The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines, which did a remarkable research about the jobless situation, has come up with that startling figure about a million graduates who would end up unemployed.
The reason: The graduates are ill-prepared for the kind of job that awaits them, and many of them must have to learn new skills so they could be employed. The additional training is usually mandated by hiring companies since the educational institutions from where they graduated were not able to teach them these needed skills.
Thus, even after going through college for up to four years, the graduates turn out to be still lacking the necessary skills, among them communication skills. The stats on the employment figures show that the educational institutions have failed to teach the students the needed skills and qualifications for the jobs they aspire for.
With the ranks of the unemployed going up, and coupled with the upcoming “homecoming” of about a million overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), the government will have a daunting task in making the lives of our compatriots less miserable.
Many of the OFWs in the Middle East would also “graduate” from their work due to the economic distress that Saudi Arabia and other Mideast countries are now experiencing due to the big decline in crude oil prices, compounded by the profligate ways of their rulers. There are trickles of OFWs now coming home–for good—and this is expected to later on reach critical numbers.
When that happens, we can expect the exploitation of those seeking to be employed, with many of them accepting compensation packages even below wage standards. Labor contracting agencies are expected to mushroom, each one in a cutthroat competition that would do away with minimum-wage levels, a simple case of demand and supply.
As per the scenario painted by the TUCP, many employers will be demanding additional qualifications from this year’s graduating class, seen to hit a million, based on statistics last year. In March last year, there were a total of 656,284 college graduates and an additional 1.6 million people (some of whom are college grads) who were certified by the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda) as of October last year.
All of them would have to learn the painful lesson of the job market place and that is that most employers will be demanding additional qualifications that require more training for the job applicants and consequently additional costs.
“This additional layer in the procedure could mean additional training, which entails further cost and perseverance for the applicant while those who fall through the cracks will become unemployed or underemployed,” said TUCP spokesman Alan Tanjusay.
The TUCP official who has the employment numbers paints the harsh realities in the job market. All because of a job-skills mismatch. Why, even the job fairs that have been conducted find employment for the graduates show a grim scenario, as far as the employment situation is concerned.
Data from the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) show that very few applicants were hired on the spot in government-initiated job fairs for the past two years: Out of the 4,239,392 domestic and international job vacancies offered in 3,686 year-round job fairs held in 2014 and 2015 nationwide, only 391,088 were hired on the spot out of the 1,286,073 applicants.
“This job-skills mismatch crisis in the country has been going on and it continues to grow. Competition is getting higher, so employers are putting additional qualifications into the job descriptions,” the TUCP official said, as he issued the warning that
heightened competitiveness at the job market, with little or no adjustment on the part of the learning institutions, make job hunting in the country worse than ever.
The DOLE identified 275 key occupations and 102 hard-to-fill occupations as part of the ongoing efforts to address the country’s high unemployment rate, particularly among the youth. But that is as far the government agency would go. What is needed for starters is to have an honest-to-goodness plan between the government and the private sector to address the worsening unemployment level.