Create 15M jobs in 5 years for Phils to remain competitive

The National Competitiveness Council (NCC) said the Philippines needs to create three to four million jobs per year, or 15 million quality jobs over the next five years, to catch up with its neighbors, gmanews.tv reported.

According to Malaya, the jobs are needed to bridge the employment gap and make the country into a new industrialized nation.

A new study commissioned by the council found that there was a need to create 13.6 to 15.2 million jobs to lower the unemployment rate to the healthy East Asian average.

The jobs also need to be secure, pay fair wages, and provide personal development and social protection to families, said the study, which pushed for “sound industrial policy for job creation" that focused on the relatively stable manufacturing sector where sunrise industries and higher quality jobs are usually found.

The eight-month study, completed in December and presented to the NCC last month, emphasized the need to address constraints to economic growth – tight fiscal space, inadequate infrastructure, and weak investor confidence.

"The country needs to generate at least three to four million quality jobs per year, or 15 million quality jobs in the next five years, to be able to bridge the employment gap in the Philippines, and to soon become a newly industrialized country," the council said in a statement.

"[In] the past few years, the government has been counting jobs that are just temporary to cover increasing unemployment and underemployment," said Fernando T. Aldaba, author of the study, in a telephone interview with gmanews.tv on Monday. Aldaba co-authored the study with Reuel R. Hermoso, a fellow economist from Ateneo de Manila.

Aldaba said an average of three million quality jobs over the next five years is needed to bring down the unemployment rate to two percent by the fifth year, BusinessMirror reports.

Data from the National Statistics Office suggest that less than a million jobs are created yearly. As of October 2009 the employed numbered 35.477 million, an increase of 942,000 from October 2008.

Sustainable Employment Creation - A Strategic Concern for the Philippine Economy

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