The ranks of young Filipinos not qualified for call-center jobs could increase in 10 years due to gap in the skills required by the business-process outsourcing (BPO) industry and the talent being produced by the educational system, the World Bank said.
In a study titled “Toward Solutions for Youth Employment: A 2015 Baseline Report,” the World Bank revealed that the ratio of underqualified workers to higher skill employment could reach 25 percent in the Philippines by 2025.
Apart from the Philippines, other Southeast Asian countries that will suffer from this are Vietnam and Indonesia, where the higher skills mismatch will increase to 10 percent and 65 percent, respectively.
“Having young people enter the work force with the skills required for this work will be important for both the youth and for the country’s economic growth,” the report stated.
The World Bank said call-center jobs are considered medium-skill jobs in developed countries. Due to increased trade and offshoring, more of these jobs will be brought to developing countries in the next 10 years.
The bank said data from the International Labor Organization (ILO) showed low-skill occupations and nonroutine manual jobs make up more than 45 percent of total employment. The ILO data also showed that medium-skill routine jobs accounted for as much as 37 percent. To meet the skills demand for these jobs, the World Bank said developing countries like the Philippines must train workers in broader but transferrable cognitive skills.
The Philippines must also be able to design a system of credible skills certification to allow workers to transfer positions and sectors.
The bank also said there is a need for a higher degree of computer literacy among workers. This is key especially for outsourced online support jobs.
The World Bank also highlighted the need to include soft skills, or more behavioral skills, in the training of workers. This, the bank said, will become more valuable in a services-driven economy.
“Task-based and short-term employment both require the ability to be flexible and adaptable to new situations, which is itself an important noncognitive skill,” the bank said. “However, it is important to keep in mind that the share of the work force actually impacted by these changing skill requirements will }vary from country to country, which will, in turn, condition policy responses.” The World Bank said that globally, 1.8 billion young people are currently neither in employment, education or training. Of this number, only 40 percent are expected to be able to get jobs that currently exist.
The Washington-based lender said the global economy will need to create 600 million jobs over the next 10 years. This translates to 5 million jobs a month to keep pace with the projected youth employment rates.
“Reversing the youth-employment crisis is a pressing global priority and the socio-economic cost of inaction is high,” the World Bank said.
The bank added that today’s youth will not be able to escape poverty by 2030 if they do not have a means
of employment.
New targets related to youth employment in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) reflect this recognition and desire for change. The report helps track the SDGs by providing a baseline against which to measure progress.