ONLINE hiring in March expanded 13 percent on strong demand growths in the health care, consumer goods, hospitality and logistics industries, Monster.com said.
In a report last week, Monster.com claimed March online hiring grew 13 percent, with the health-care industry posting the highest demand growth at 25 percent. Online recruitment activities of consumer goods and hospitality firms also went up 24 percent, while logistics providers accounted for 22 percent, data from the Monster Employment Index (MEI) showed.
Further, online hiring in the banking and business-process outsourcing industries grew 15 percent and 12 percent, respectively.
Online employment of manufacturing and advertising firms rose 8 percent and 7 percent, accordingly, while constructors improved theirs with 6 percent. All industries monitored under the MEI registered positive figures in March, the exception of education with its online hiring down 11 percent.
Monster.com CEO for Asia-Pacific and Middle East Abhijeet Mukherjee said there is an increase of online hiring sentiment in the Philippines due to the government’s infrastructure program, as well as its renewed foreign investment policy.
He added projections that label the country as the region’s next economic powerhouse make it more attractive to offshore investors. Mukherjee argued this will bring about long-term positive changes to the economy which will, in turn, create more jobs for the people.
“Online hiring sentiment in the Philippines has been consistently rising, and much of this growth can be attributed to the government’s infrastructural reforms, together with the push for greater foreign investment,” Mukherjee said in the report.
“Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III recently dubbed the Philippines as the region’s next economic powerhouse, and urged American businesses to invest in the local economy. This would be a huge step forward in bringing lasting positive changes to the economy, and would be bound to inject further growth in the local job market,” he said.
The MEI is a monthly gauge of online recruitment activities based on a real-time review of millions of job opportunities culled from a large representative roster of career web sites and online job listings across the Philippines.
However, it does not reflect the trend of any one advertiser or source, but is an aggregate measure of the change in online hiring across industries. The index’s data are compiled and processed by Indian Monster.com, which has operations in 10 countries, including the Philippines.