Tourism industry enjoying young workforce

MANILA, Philippines — The country’s tourism industry is enjoying a young workforce and with more available jobs being easy to fill, the industry profile recently published by the Philippine Statistics Authority showed.

The 2016 industry profile for the tourism industry showed 457,000 persons employed in the sector, with 55.7 percent of them aged between 15 to 30 years old.

This is also a sector that provides more jobs for women accounting for 46.4 percent of the total tourism workforce.

Most of the available jobs in the industry or 74.3 percent have also been described by employers as being easy to fill while positions considered to be hard to fill comprised only 25.7 percent of the total.

From January 2015 to June 2016, the total number of vacancies in the tourism industry was estimated at 55,000.

Positions that were considered to be the hardest to fill were those for nursing professionals, bus and tram drivers, medical imaging and therapeutic equipment technicians and waiters.

Establishments surveyed during the period reported either having few applicants for the job, applicants lacking the skills needed, or applicants lacking years in experience.

As of June 30, 2016, around 6,000 establishments were engaged in tourism-related industries nationwide.

Out of the total employed in the sector, 85.2 percent were rank and file workers and a small portion 0.8 percent were working owners.

Most of the rank and file workers in the sector at 71.8 percent enjoy regular employment status, while 28.2 percent are non-regular workers employed on a contractual or project basis, seasonal basis and as apprentices.

The tourism industry also relied heavily on contractors as it was found that more than half or 52.1 percent of the total establishments in the sector were engaged in subcontracting activities done on-site employing 81,000 agency hired workers.