PSA says lack of skilled hands haunt agri

By Rose de la Cruz

What else is new?

We’ve known it all along– the  agriculture, forestry and fishery sectors– are now haunted by lack of skilled workers.

The Philippine Statistics Authority said majority of job vacancies in these sectors are considered hard-to-fill jobs based on the latest Integrated Survey on Labor and Employment (ISLE), which shows that 78.4 percent of job vacancies for skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers were hardest to fill.

As a percent to total job vacancies, the PSA said, the sectors mentioned are also one of the highest rates.

“Hard-to-fill positions pose difficulties in recruitment such as lack of applicants, lack of years of experience, and lack of competency and/or skill, among others,” Business Mirror quoted the PSA report.

The data showed there were a total of 2,151 job vacancies for skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers. This was composed of 1,687 hard-to-fill positions and only 465 easy-to-fill positions.

In the number of job vacancies in establishments employing 20 or more workers, the PSA said, the agriculture, forestry and fishing industry had a total of 3,039 job vacancies.

Some 63.9 percent or 1,941 of these job vacancies are considered hard-to-fill jobs while 36.1 percent or 1,098 jobs were considered easy-to-fill jobs, the report noted.

Among the total number of job vacancies, 239,254 or 51.5 percent were hard to fill. The remaining 48.5 percent were easy-to-fill or job vacancies that had no difficulty during recruitment.

“The top three reasons why job vacancies were considered to be hard-to-fill were few or no applicants applying for the job vacancy [43.1 percent], applicants expecting a high salary [17.2 percent], and applicants lacking needed competency or skill [17.1 percent],” PSA said.

In the ISLE, from September 2021 to August 2022, some 35.8 percent of the 36,342 estimated number of formal establishments employing 20 or more workers had posted job vacancies.

Job vacancies, PSA said, refer to unfilled job openings that are immediately available for placement and where active recruitment steps are being undertaken.

A total of 464,593 vacant positions were recorded for establishments employing 20 or more workers. Administrative and Support Service Activities had the highest share to total job vacancies at 43.1 percent.

This was followed by Manufacturing at 20 percent, and Wholesale and Retail Trade; Repair of Motor Vehicles and Motorcycles at 11 percent.

The Other Service Activities except Activities of Membership Organizations recorded the least number of job vacancies at 649 or 0.1 percent of the total.

The data also showed entry-level positions, which are starting positions that require little to no experience, comprised the majority or 82.6 percent of the total job vacancies, Business Mirror said.

This was followed by junior level position at 13.6 percent, while senior and executive positions recorded shares of 3.5 percent and 0.3 percent, respectively.

This month, the PSA said the severe dry spell has caused the agriculture and fisheries sector to shed more than a million jobs in March 2024.

Based on the March Labor Force Statistics, the number of employed Filipinos rose by 572,000 to 49.15 million in 2024 from the 48.58 million posted in the same period of 2023.

However, agriculture and forestry, as well as fishing and aquaculture, posted the largest declines in employment with a combined 1.33 million jobs lost in March 2024.