President Marcos highlights private sector role in job creation

MANILA, Philippines — President Marcos underscored the vital role of collaboration between the government and the private sector in generating employment as he commended the SM Group for its contributions to job creation and workforce development.

Speaking at the two-day Jobstreet Career Con 2025 held at the SMX Convention Center, Marcos attributed the decline in the country’s unemployment rate to government-led initiatives to upskill workers.

“Cooperation between the government and the private sector is very important. Ma’am Tessie Coson, who has been with us from the start, opened the doors of SM malls for job fairs like this, which have been very successful,” he said.

Teresita Sy-Coson is the vice-chairman of SM Investments. She is also a member of the Private Sector Advisory Council’s (PSAC) Education and Jobs Group, established by Marcos in 2022.

The President also expressed optimism that many of the 18,000 registered job seekers at the fair would secure employment.

“When we did these job fairs and upskilling programs with SM before, they were very successful. So we said, let’s try to do this more often,” he added.

Marcos emphasized that the partnership between the government and the private sector has led to various sectors and agencies working together to bridge employers and prospective employees, while also upgrading workforce skills.

About 130 companies participated in the job fair, including SM Retail, Nestle, Metrobank, Accenture, and others from various industries such as information technology, business process management, retail, banking, construction, logistics, food services and manufacturing.

In 2024, SM Supermalls successfully hosted 183 job fairs nationwide, connecting approximately 107,000 job seekers with nearly 6,000 employers.

These job fairs also feature government one-stop shop services for employment documents, such as TIN, NBI or police clearance, SSS, Pag-IBIG, PhilHealth and national ID.