The Philippines improved its position by six places, at 49th out of 63 countries, in the 2019 World Talent Ranking (WTR) from 55th in 2018.
But the Philippines remains a laggard among big Asean economies which is led by Singapore ranked 10th, followed by Malaysia (22nd), Indonesia (41st), and Thailand (43rd).
The WTR ranks countries based on their ability to attract, develop, and retain a talented pool of human resources that businesses can employ. More than half of the criteria were based on an executive opinion survey while the remaining half were based on statistics. The 2019 edition ranked countries using 32 criteria grouped into
three factors — investment and development, appeal, and readiness.
Readiness – which looks at the quality and growth of the existing talent pool in the economy – has consistently been the highest-ranked among the three factors.
This year, the Philippines ranked 26th in readiness, an 11-place improvement from last year’s 37th, mostly driven by indicators on skilled labor, language skills and share of science graduates among college degree holders.
The next higher ranked factor was appeal – which measures the ability of a country to attract and retain high-quality human resources from abroad – at 31st, an improvement
from last year’s 38th. The highest ranked indicators here are cost of living and effective personal income tax rate while the lower ranked were quality of life, justice and brain drain.
The Philippines consistently performed worst in investment and development, which measures the level of investment in and development of domestic, home-grown human resources.
The country ranked a 61st out of 63 countries, a one-place improvement from 2018.
Here, the Philippines consistently ranked in the 60s. Its low rank was mostly driven by pupil-teacher ratio in primary and secondary education and public expenditure on education per student.
Previous years’ overall rankings of the Philippines were 57th in 2015, 55th in 2016, and 45th in 2017.
The WTR is a publication of the International Institute for Management Development with the Asian Institute of Management R.S.N. Policy Center for Competitiveness as its Philippine partner.
Overall, the highest ranked country was Switzerland, followed by Denmark, Sweden, Austria, and Luxembourg.
