Labor Secretary Bienvenido Laguesma is pushing for the creation of an inter-agency panel that will help address the perennial problem of job-skills mismatch in the country.
In a radio interview yesterday, Laguesma said he has proposed to the Cabinet the creation of a body composed of different agencies related to education, skills development, and jobs.
Laguesma said these would include the Department of Education, the Commission on Higher Education, the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority, the DOLE, and the Professional Regulation Commission.
“There is really a need to have proper coordination for us to see what does the industry really needs so that we can have proper guidance,” said Laguesma, who had pointed to job-skills mismatch as one of the reasons for the rising unemployment rate in the country.
“There are available jobs but the supply of workers do not match. It will really result to higher unemployment,” said Laguesma in an earlier interview.
Based on the June 2022 Labor Force Survey (LFS), there were an estimated 2.99 million jobless individuals, an increase of 62,000 from the 2.93 million unemployed in the May 2022 LFS results.
