THE Philippine Business for Education (PBEd), together with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Philippines, has developed an online career-exploration portal to help reduce youth unemployment in the country by almost one-third.
In a press briefing in Makati City on September 9, PBEd President Chito Salazar told reporters that the FutureYou.ph is a tool that could partly address unemployment and jobs mismatch among the country’s young populace.
“PBEd has been focused on this issue of [jobs] mismatch. It’s a whole idea that a lot of our kids have a hard time finding jobs, and a lot of companies also have a hard time finding the employees,” he said.
Part of the reasons for this, he noted, is the lack of information that led to unemployment among the populace, especially the young ones or newly graduates. “People are entering the wrong careers to a large extent, because they don’t know what the opportunities are [there], and what they need to do to get these jobs. So that’s what we’re trying to do here: To bridge the information gap,” Salazar said.
With the portal, students and job seekers will see what jobs are in demand per industry, and which courses or programs can lead to those careers.
Also available are the basic information on schools, including degree programs they offer, their performance on licensure exams, plus other information on various industry careers.
There will also be a blog providing a career advice.
Set to be launched to the public on September 23 in the University of Makati, FutureYou.ph is a part of the three-year Higher Education and Productivity joint project of the PBEd and the USAID Philippines aimed at improving post-secondary education through national and local industry-academe partnerships.
While its targets only the country’s youth population, Salazar sees its significant to help mitigate the rising number of young Filipinos without jobs. As per the International Labor Organization’s Global Employment Trends of 2013 report, the Philippines still has the highest unemployment rate in Southeast Asia at 7.3 percent, as compared to Indonesia (6 percent); Brunei (3.7 percent); Myanmar (3.5 percent); Malaysia (3.2 percent); and Singapore (3.1 percent). An average of 2.8 million Filipinos have been unemployed in the last two years, of which the most affected agree group is 15 to 24, by accounting for about 48 percent, while those under 24 to 30 years of age represent 30 percent. Combining the two groups will constitute almost 80 percent of the whole pie. Of the total unemployed, 44 percent have either graduated or reached high school, while 34 percent have reached or graduated from college.
“So we want to reduce youth unemployment, hopefully, by about 20 percent to 30 percent [with this portal]. Of course, that assumes everything as follows: That the schools, improve their quality of education, etc.,” Salazar said.
The PBEd and the USAID Philippines also endeavor to make the students better informed about the job opportunities ahead of them.
Based on data from the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) regarding the overall enrollment from school year (SY) 2005-2006 to SY 2010-2011, the most popular courses are business administration (24 percent); medical and allied sciences (19 percent); education science and teacher training (13 percent); engineering and technology (12 percent); and information technology, or IT (11 percent).
The projections from SY 2011-2012 to SY 2015-2016 for business administration, education and teacher training, engineering and technology, and medical and allied sciences are 23 percent, 14 percent, 12 percent, 12 percent and 11 percent, respectively.
This is where the mismatch happens since based on a study by the Department of Labor and Employment, the CHED has identified the following as the top indemand priority courses from academic year 2014-2015 to 2017-2018: Agriculture and related fields and engineering (15 percent); science and math (13 percent); and health sciences, IT and teacher education (10 percent). “So with this [portal] in a nutshell, we’re trying to bridge [the gap], we’re match-making, we’re trying to bring the right jobs to the right people, and help the right companies find the right people,” Salazar said.