Uncertainties in the global economy and weak peso caused online hiring in the Philippines to slow at the start of the fourth quarter, according to a foreign research outfit.
The Monster Employment Index (MEI), a monthly gauge of online job-posting activity in the Philippines, posted zero growth in hiring activity between October 2015 and October 2016.
“Following the external economic volatilities and the earlier peso plunge, the pace of hiring in Philippines has eased further, as companies and employers remain watchful of the economic development,” said Sanjay Modi, managing director of Monster.com in Asia Pacific and Middle East.
However, Modi said job prospects in the country remain positive due to the Philippines’s strong growth.
The economy posted a 7.1- percent growth in the third quarter and an average growth of 7 percent in the January to September period.
Modi said this signifies stable growth in the long-term. Among the main drivers for this growth is the Philippines’s renewal of ties with China.
“Chinese investments pouring into Philippines’s tourism industry are likely to result in continued growth in the hospitality sector. The Department of Tourism estimates that 2 million Chinese tourists will flock to the country annually. It is mapping out ways to cope with the influx of visitors, much of which will result in the creation of jobs,” Modi said.
Based on the MEI, the education sector, as well as the logistic, courier/ freight/transportation, import/export, shipping sector, remained in the lead when it comes to online hiring, realizing a 14-percent year-on-year growth. The education sector is also in its sixth consecutive month of double-digit annual growth in October.
At the other end of the scale, the information technology, telecom/ ISP sector saw the greatest decline at a contraction of 12 percent.
In terms of occupational groups, customer-service jobs took the lead in online demand, reporting a 9-percent year-on-year growth in October. This was closely followed by the purchase/logistics/supply-chain jobs, software, hardware, telecom jobs, and sales and business development jobs, all of which reported 7-percent year-over-year growth in online hiring.
Marketing and communications professionals saw the greatest slump in online hiring, reporting a contraction of 7-percent year-on-year.
MEI Philippines is based on a real-time review of millions of employer job opportunities culled from a large representative selection of career web sites and online job listings nationwide.
The index does not reflect the trend of any one advertiser or source, but is an aggregate measure of the change in job listings across the industry.