The Labor Market

March 14, 2005 - Sorsogon City

To tackle the tools and techniques to effectively implement the new Find+Seek+Train-Match Strategy of TESDA, the Regional Office V conducted the Local Employment Management Seminar with participants representing all six provinces in Bicol.

Even before the said seminar, the Provincial Office of Sorsogon has already been mapping out the priority skills in almost all the local municipalities here through the CTECs and PESO. This will require a regular monitoring of the supply and demand of the labor market.

Establishing labor market information units in the employment service will consider regional and local differences in terms of labor market conditions, i.e., occupational/skills composition of the labor force, stages of industrial development, skill requirements of industries, etc.

Such consideration is highly useful in deriving policy implications from the macro perspective. Better transparency of the functioning of the labor market on the regional level can be achieved with the availability of local data.

However, generating ten million jobs for the Filipinos may not be the ultimate solution.

Improving labor productivity and creating decent employment opportunities is vital for reducing global poverty as called for in the Millennium Development goals (MDGs), and stated in the ILO World Employment Report 2004-2005.

The ILO report says that the 185.9 million people in the world who were unemployed in 2003 represent the "tip of the iceberg" of the decent work deficit, since more than seven times that number of people are employed but still live in poverty. According to the report, some 2.8 billion people were employed globally in 2003, more than ever before. However, of these, nearly 1.4 billion - half the world's workers - are living in poverty unable to earn enough to lift themselves and their families above the poverty line.

To deal with this challenge, the report has suggested that "institutions should provide workers with security and training to better prepare them for the changing labor market."

In this context, the skills mapping plan of TESDA's provincial offices can be more successful by upgrading the informal economy as an alternative policy on improving labor productivity and creating decent jobs.

For the informal sector, there is a need to create policies to protect the workers.

Also, those local units that have managed to create such conditions for the Filipino workers are more likely to be on the right track.

- ella jamoralin