SOLVING the puzzle of labor shortage amid high unemployment is not as difficult as aligning in a single color all the squares in a Rubik’s Cube. The problem is a mismatch between what people know and what industries need.
Many of the jobs in demand and hard to fill, as I mentioned in last week’s column, were in the industry sector, such as engineers, accountants, machine operators, production workers in factories and construction workers.
Many students take up courses that are irrelevant, insofar as opportunities for employment are concerned, because the courses are not the ones that industries are looking for.
One consequence, a college graduate is compelled to work as janitor or messenger, which does not require a college degree. Bank tellers in local banks are generally college graduates; in other countries like the United States, a high-school diploma is enough for such position. Because of the mismatch, we are short of engineers, accountants, architects and other workers. The shortage is aggravated by competition from foreign employers.
I think a set of statistics from the web site of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) is a good illustration of the mismatch. According to the CHED, a total of 469,654 students graduated from public and private colleges and universities in 2010.
Graduates of different engineering courses numbered 48,448, or just 10.3 percent of the total graduates, during academic year 2009-2010.
Graduates of architecture and town planning courses numbered 2,286, or 0.49 percent of the total graduates. Some 2,105 students (0.45 percent) received degrees in mathematics, while graduates of trade craft and industrial courses numbered 946, or mere 0.2 percent of the total graduates. The most number of graduates in 2010 were in the medical and related fields (probably nursing). They numbered 129,057, or 27.27 percent of the total graduates.
This was not surprising because there was a time when nursing was booming because of high demand abroad, including in the US and the United Kingdom. In fact, many Filipino doctors, who were already practicing here, decided to take up nursing to be able to land jobs in the US, where their employment also meant an opportunity to become American citizens. That opportunity is gone, as the recession in developed countries that began in 2008 forced many employers, including hospitals, to retrench. To solve their rising unemployment problem, developed countries also encouraged their people to take up nursing.
BBC News reported in July 2012 that at the beginning of that year, more than 200,000 registered Filipino nurses could not find work, and an additional 80,000 were graduating to join the saturated market for nurses. The schools, which were quick to shift to nursing when the demand for nurses was high, were not able to shift quickly to other courses that were in demand, both here and abroad.
There should be renewed emphasis on math and sciences, from the primary to high school, because of the shortage of qualified workers in the industry sector. Science and engineering courses, including nondegree technical courses, should receive emphasis to produce enough workers for the industries.
My feeling is that there should be closer coordination among the Departments of Labor and Employment, Trade and Industries, and Education to give proper advice to high-school students on what courses to take, courses that will enable them to get jobs easily when they graduate.
The government, which controls the state universities and colleges (SUCs), can direct these to emphasize match and science courses and provide budgetary support. It can even withdraw budgets for courses that are not needed by the economy and transfer the funds to courses that are needed by industries.
The Philippines has a total of 2,299 higher-education institutions (HEIs), of which 656, or 28.53 percent, are government-owned, according to the CHED. The public HEIs consist of 547 SUCs, 95 local universities and colleges (LUCs), five special HEIs, one CHED-supervised institution and eight other government schools.
If the national government can mobilize the 547 SUCs and local governments the 95 LUCs, then the solution to the puzzle of worker shortage amid high unemployment is at hand. And, considering that the government-owned institutions are supposed to provide college education to poor students, the solution will be like hitting two birds with one stone: generating jobs for the poor and responding to the demand of the industry sector.
I cannot overemphasize the urgency of solving this problem. The Philippines is poised to become a star performer in the global manufacturing arena, which will aggravate the worker shortage if the country does not respond quickly.
To be continued
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