Over .7-M new grads to swell ranks of jobseekers

MANILA, Philippines – Sen. Ralph Recto over the weekend urged the administration to address the growing unemployment in the country.

This, as number of jobless people is expected to reach about a million more as 700,000 new graduates look for work next month.

Recto said 564,000 college graduates were still looking for work as of January last year.

“We need to know where the government’s job plan is going and let Congress put in the legislative man-hours to craft or amend relevant laws,” he said.

The government has yet to announce its job target for the next three years, he added.

Recto sees a “growing disconnect” between the government’s job generation plan and the actual number of people out of jobs.

“The country has a growing labor force that has no jobs available for them,” he said.

“There must be a general plan to connect the growth in labor to the availability of jobs,” he added.

Recto said the country’s labor force grew by 4.8 percent or 1.902 million more from 39.287 million in October 2010 to 41.189 million in the same month in 2011.

Able-bodied workers grew and the rate of unemployment remained the highest in the region despite its decline from 7.1 percent in October 2010 to 6.4 percent in October 2011, he added.

Fifty percent of the unemployed are young people aged 15 to 24, Recto said.

Recto has filed a bill seeking to grant business owners tax discounts and other regulatory perks in exchange for hiring additional workers.

Recto has called on the Senate committees on economic affairs and on labor, employment and human resource development to look into the job generation program of the government and see if it was producing results. –Christina Mendez (The Philippine Star)