Services, agribusiness, mining top job creators

THE services sector, which includes supermarkets, banks, hotels and restaurants, and logistics, will be the main creators of jobs between 2012 and 2020.

This was one of the highlights of an extensive study which was revealed by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) on Friday on the labor market in the Philippines until the end of this decade. The study was entitled “Project Jobfits 2020.”

The study, which included not just field researches but also consultations with industry leaders, labor market experts and members of the academe, was meant to guide government, private enterprise and young Filipinos on deciding their courses of action in the next eight years.

The DOLE did not find a major shift in the list of Key Employment Generators (KEGs) that contributed to the creation of jobs in the past decade. It identified 12 traditional job creators dominated by cyberservices, health and wellness, tourism, banking and finance, transportation and logistics, and wholesale and retail trade—all in the services sector.

Agribusiness was also identified as one of the big job makers in the near and medium-term for job seekers. A total of 14 of the country’s 16 regions expect their agribusiness sectors to be the main job generator between this year and the close of the decade.

Foreign jobs, on the other hand, will remain one of the top options for Filipino job seekers since a growing number of professionals and highly-skilled workers in the developed world are expected to retire and will require replacements during the same period.

The mining industry was also expected to contribute a larger share of employment in the next several years, at least in eight regions where mining explorations are ongoing.

Overall, the prospects for gainful employment was seen as best to professionals and those with highly specialized skills in those identified key employment generators.

Those with few skills were seen to be out of the loop in the new demand for workers in this decade. Only the retail trade, mining and agribusiness segments of the productive economy may demand semi-skilled and unskilled labor. –RAADEE S. SAUSA REPORTER, Manila Times