Jobs-skills mismatch crisis confronts 2016 graduates

By TUCP
March 6, 2016

QUEZON CITY – An estimated 1.2 million college and vocational graduates this month will find difficulty in getting a job due to a growing mismatch between their training and the job skills required by most of employers, said the labor group Trade Union Congress of the Philippines-Nagkaisa (TUCP-Nagkaisa).

Recent data from the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) showed that out of the 4, 239,392 domestic and international job vacancies offered in 3,686 all year-round job fairs activities 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 on going and it continues to grow. Competition is getting higher so employers are putting additional qualifications into the job descriptions for them to compete. Heightened competitiveness at the job market without or little adjustment at the learning institutions is what makes this crisis thrive,” said its spokesperson Alan Tanjusay.

“With employers adding more qualifications, graduates’ credentials will be scrutinized longer. 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,” he said.

The same record showed that in 2015, 1,661 job fairs were held and an estimated 135,590 were hired out of 487,640 applicants. In 2014, 2,025 job fairs were conducted by government and employers all throughout the country with about 255,498 were hired out of 798,433 applicants.

Records from Commission on Higher Education (CHED) showed there were 656,284 college graduates in March 2015 while records from the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) showed there were 1.6 million individuals certified as of October the same year.

In DOLE’s Labor Market Information (LMI) Report for 2013 to 2020, it identified key 275 occupations as in-demand and 102 occupations are listed as hard-to-fill from among key and emerging industries.

In-demand occupations refer to active occupations/job vacancies posted or advertised recurrently. These occupations have high turnover/replacement rate and are essentials in the operations of a company.

In-demand occupations include abaca pulp processor, admino programmer, banana growing worker, bangus diver, banquet supervisor, bamboo materials craftsman, fish cage caretaker, groundskeeper, multi-lingual service crew, mussel grower, pointman, reefman, and whale shark interaction officer.

Hard-to-fill occupations, meanwhile, refer to job vacancies to which the employer/company is having difficulty to be filled because job applicants are not qualified or there is no supply of job applicants for the particular vacancy, the report said.