Skills matching seen vital to sustainability
Unemployment in the country is expected to drop further, given the coming national mid-term elections and expectations of growth in the country’s share in future foreign investment inflow, officers of an employers’ group said.
Rolando Moya, director-general of the Employers Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP), sees the higher employment numbers in November as indicative of the continuing expansion of businesses to address domestic demand.
“Since the fourth quarter of 2024, we have not gathered among ECOP members any negative sentiment on hiring,” Moya said in an online interview with Malaya Business Insight.
ECOP president Sergio Ortiz-Luis said unemployment could ease further, although slowly, as the country shows more room to absorb greater foreign investment inflow. “Compared with our neighbors in Asean, the Philippines still lags in foreign direct investment,” he said in a separate online interview with Business Insight, without elaborating on the matter.
However, Ortiz-Luis warned that for job generation and sustainability to be enhanced, the problem of skills mismatch needs to be addressed.
“We have to look at the job market in a more sustainable way. We have about 800,000 to a million new entrants to the labor force every year, but their skills should match with what business needs,” Ortiz-Luis said.
To this, Moya added: “To address skills that match business needs, ECOP is poised to consolidate data among members and other business groups on the type of workers needed over the medium to long term.
ECOP hopes to upskill workers as more businesses start their systems transition into new technologies, he said.
Moya said he also views the employment picture improving over the near term, especially given the mid-term national elections set for XXXX this year.
