Pinoy nurses seeking US jobs down 10.5%

MANILA, Philippines – The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) yesterday said the number of Filipino nurses who have sought employment in the United States during the first quarter of 2009 has gone down by 10.5 percent.

Citing records of the US National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX), TUCP secretary-general and former senator Ernesto Herrera said that from January to March this year, a total of 4,194 Filipino nurses took the test for the first time.

But during the same period last year, the number of first-time NCLEX examinees reached 4,686.

For 2008, the number of first-time examinees was 20,746 or 3.5 percent lower compared to the 21,499 examinees in 2007.

“It is quite possible that the severe global economic downturn, which has hit America hard, has somewhat dampened for now the desire of some Filipino nurses to seek employment there,” Herrera said.

Herrera, however, said the US healthcare industry as a whole and hospitals there have been continuously hiring staff, “while other industries have been throwing out workers.”

He added that while some 5.1 million workers have been displaced in the US since the recession in December 2007, the healthcare sector still managed to create 30,000 new jobs every month in 2008.

Herrera underscored the need for nursing students to specialize in geriatric nursing or the provision of nursing services to the elderly to enable them to pursue their profession.

“The populations of America, Japan and other industrialized countries are getting very old. There is tremendous demand now for geriatric nurses,” he said.

Herrera added that if the country would continue to produce and export nurses, “we might as well make our programs highly responsive to the demands of the global market.”

“This way, fresh nursing graduates would readily obtain gainful employment overseas,” he said, warning that the huge oversupply of nurses is keeping their wages in the local front “even more depressed.”

“We now have more than half a million nurses looking for jobs, including the 67,220 who passed the local licensure examinations in July 2008 and February this year,” he added.–Sheila Crisostomo, Philippine Star