Reality has sunk in for this year’s 700,000 new college grads. They are unwelcome in this land. Since leaving school in April they have found no work. There are only 70,000 job openings, a tenth of their number. Not one requires a college degree.
The Commission on Higher Education counts 692,602 fresh grads. From most to least, they come from these courses/fields:
• business administration and related disciplines;
• education science and teacher training;
• information and communication technology;
• engineering and technology courses;
• medical and allied courses;
• agricultural, forestry, and fisheries sciences;
• service trades;
• natural and marine sciences,
• social sciences; and
• behavioral sciences.
Full of dreams only during last month’s commencement exercises, the grads must be very demoralized today. The most in-demand job openings are not anywhere near or do not need their four-year training.
The Department of Labor and Employment recently posted online the Top 10 needed workers and number of vacancies:
• call center agents, 26,646;
• customer service assistants, 9,348;
• production or factory workers, 7,199;
• service crew and company drivers, 6,007;
• sugarcane farmers, 5,000;
• sewers, 4,700;
• credit and collection specialists, 4,000;
• electronic equipment assemblers, 2,500;
• staff nurses, 2,395; and
• cashiers, 2,166.
Since the 2000s economists have noted the acute job mismatch. The government has barely begun to solve it.
The outgoing Aquino admin boasts of 6.2-percent average GDP growth in 2010-2015. It notched a “better-than-expected” 6.9 percent in first quarter-2016, supposedly the best in the region.
Yet unemployment was also the highest in Asia in end-2015: 6.5 percent or 2.6 million workers. The jobless are mostly youths and males.
This year’s new college grads swelled that number.
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Snooty foreign media and their local fans belittle Rody Duterte as a one-issue President. Since he won on the platform of anti-criminality, they allege that he knows nothing but that. They deem petty his plan to impose nationwide, as he did in Davao City as two-decade mayor, a last-order rule of 10 p.m. in liquor bars and strict laws against road speedsters.
Those Philippine bashers might be surprised at what law enforcement can do for the land. In detailing his governance plan, Duterte makes citizens imagine quiet, better communities. When government delivers such basic service, they will adopt and improve their lives.
Disciplining habitual night partyers to go home early would make them more productive. They would better supervise the kids’ homework, and keep them away from drugs. Spending patterns would change, like, from alcohol to reading materials, healthy foods, and physical exercises. This would spur publishing and printing, food processing, and fitness gadgetry businesses, and generate jobs there.
More police checkpoints against speedsters would require tens of thousands of breath-analyzers. Hundreds of thousands of CCTVs too in street corners. Filipino technologists and technicians would start manufacturing instead of importing such equipment, parts, and accessories. Peace and order would entice more foreign investors and tourists.
From more businesses and employed citizens would come more tax collections. Government would be able to hire more law enforcers and acquire equipment, for still brisker economy in upward spiral. Opportunities would be endless, from manufacturing firearms to innovating new communications to constructing more jails. And that’s just for starters.
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