900,000 college graduates may end up jobless or underemployed

MANILA, Philippines – The crop of more than 900,000 college graduates of class 2009 are facing the bleak possibility of joblessness or underemployment with the government failing to provide jobs other than those in the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry, according to a youth party-list lawmaker.

Kabataan partylist Rep. Raymond Pala-tino said that the government has miserably failed in its vow to generate jobs especially for fresh graduates.

Palatino said the latest labor force survey showed that majority of the country’s unemployed were young people aged 15 to 24 years.

“The youth are always at the greatest risk in these economic downturns. Often it is young workers or new graduates who are the hardest hit,” he said.

Palatino said the labor force survey showed that for every 10 unemployed Filipinos, five are in the age group of 15 to 24 years.

The figure accounts for 49.2 percent of the total number of underemployed Filipinos.

If combined with the 25 to 34 age group, he said the share of young unemployed Filipinos accounts for 80 percent of the total number of unemployed Filipinos.

“The rising number of unemployed and underemployed young Filipinos only shows that the Arroyo administration has failed to live up to its promises of generating jobs for Filipinos,” Palatino said.

He said the Arroyo administration’s preoccupation with Charter change would only aggravate the rising rates of joblessness and unemployment.

“Speaker Nograles’ Cha-cha resolution seeking to scrap the 40-percent limit on foreign ownership would only make the economy more vulnerable to foreign authority and to exploitation of our work force’s cheap labor. It clearly does nothing to address the much-needed boost to our local economy for it to be able to provide more decent and adequate jobs and job security for our fresh graduates and the labor force in general,” Palatino said.

The youthful lawmaker also scoffed at the Department of Labor and Employment’s job fair as a desperate attempt to show the government’s achievement in job generation.

He said majority of the jobs available at the job fair was again in the BPO industry or for menial work abroad.