Youth unemployment in the Philippines

The Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) is working closely with the United Nations’s International Labor Organization to reduce, if not eliminate, youth unemployment in the Philippines within six years.

Baldoz cited the seriousness of the extent of youth unemployment and vulnerable employment.

Approximately 20 percent of the country’s population fall between 15 to 24 years old and that almost half, or 49 percent, of this age group are unemployed, she said.

“We need to provide our young people with decent and productive employment opportunities not only to take advantage of their huge productive capacity, but also to provide them alternatives to migration. For the vulnerable workers, we ought to provide them adequate social protection,” she said.

“We have to talk and work together and address the problems. (But) you need to understand the concepts to be able to participate in formulating the solutions to youth unemployment and other issues facing the youth,” Lawrence Jeff Johnson, ILO country director for the Philippines, said.

“The youth should take personal responsibility to have the skills, education, and training that the future demands. They should not mortgage their future,” Johnson added.

His presentation, “From Poverty to Decent Work: Bridging the Gap through the Millennium Development Goals and the Global Jobs” clarified unemployment and employment concepts, explained the current employment situation and trends in the youth sector, and discussed the ILO’s support to the Philippines in employment targeting and monitoring, in assessing wage mechanisms, in labor code review and improving compliance to international labor standards, and in engaging UN system support in fostering productive decent employment.

The DOLE and ILO will implement a joint program that would aim to achieve improved policy coherence and implementation on youth employment and migration through full stakeholder participation and increased access to decent work for poor, young women and men. (PNA)