Alcantara, Chinnih D.

Balansay, Shiela Mae P.

Balitostos, Maybelyn M.

Balondo, Jolina V.

UNEMPLOYMENT

Nowadays, especially in our country, unemployment is considered as one of the

cause of the growing percentage of poverty. It is a fact that not only the Philippines is
experiencing but also some other countries, even the big ones like US, is facing. In a
simple definition, unemployment is also referred to as joblessness. It occurs when
people are without work and are actively seeking employment. During periods of
recession, an economy usually experiences high unemployment rates and this issue is
somewhat a very serious one, which cannot give a proper attention to be tackled to.

For an unemployed individuals, as well as their families, there is this day-to-day

financial stress of not knowing on where their money would be coming from. But being
employed is hard to maintain for these days as the world is changing so fast. Any
individual could probably tell that, in today’s time trying to attain and maintain a proper
status in the corporate world is not an easy task. Like for now, that we are actually
entering in the time where technology continue to improve and starting to dominate the
manpower area which is quite alarming to the economy of a country. It is a fact that a
country with a high percentage of unemployment is not healthy for the maintenance of
the stability of country's economy and this is a situation where the government must
also pay attention.

The problem of structural unemployment in the Philippines is serious. It stands at

almost two times the number of unemployed in Asian countries, despite a relatively
strong rise in economic growth in recent years. This can mainly be attributed to the poor
education system and the fact that net job creation could not keep up with the rapid
population growth and increased labor force participation in the Philippines.

The main cause of unemployment is the repaid growth of populations. When

people multiply, there raises the problems of unemployment and it becomes difficult for
government to provide employment to a sufficient number of people. As a matter of
principle it becomes the duty of government to provide employment to all as far as
possible and we are blessed that our government is taking keen interest to solve this
series problem of today. As the growth of populations is going unchecked, jobs and
services in a given field commonly remains insufficient. When our youths do not find
employment despite their best efforts, they get irritated and feel disappointed.

There are three types of unemployment, labor class who are not educated,
educated persons without possessing any technical qualifications and technical persons
such as engineers and technical. Since the number of educated persons is increasing
day by day, we are not in a position to afford a venue of work for this growing number.
As such our educated persons are very much disappointed when they wander dark
roads in search of employment. As they do not possess any technical and practical
training, they only try to find clerical job which are not sufficiently according to the
increasing number of educated persons. It has become a very ticklish problem which is
being faced by our government. As regards educated persons, possessing technical
qualifications, they tend to be frustrated when they do not find employment despite their
best qualifications.

There can be in no two opinions that they find their employment very easily on
the merits of their technical qualifications, but according to the increasing number of
such educated persons also become victims of unemployment. Education is a very
good thing and one must be educated but the irony of it is that when we offer
educations to young people we are not in position to offer jobs to them. This is the very
cause of disappointment among our educated youths. The educated youth should
change their mind also and they should think of self-employment, rather than searching
jobs and services hither and there wasting their energy. In this way very serious
problem of unemployment may be saved to a great extent.

The second most populous country in Southeast Asia after Indonesia, the
Philippines consistently has one of the fastest economic growth in the region and the
world. With a high level of proficiency in English and a population eager to work abroad
or with foreigners, the Philippines' economy is also rapidly advancing in global services
and trade. Despite of this, the country has been experiencing the social problem of
unemployment resulting to poverty and inequality.

According to the National Statistics Office of Philippines (NSO), the

unemployment rate in the Philippines inched lower to 5.2 percent in the March quarter
of 2019 from 5.3 percent a year ago. The number of unemployed persons fell by 118
thousand to 2.20 million and the number of employed dropped 387 thousand to 41.37
million. Meanwhile, the labor force participation rate declined to 60.2 percent from 62.2
percent. Among employed persons, workers in the services sector made up 58.1
percent of the total, followed by those in the agriculture sector (22.1 percent) and
industry (19.7 percent). Unemployment rate in Philippines averaged 8.34 percent from
1994 until 2019, reaching an all time high of 13.90 percent in the first quarter of 2000
and a record low of 4.70 percent in the fourth quarter of 2016.
 Unemployment, at the individual level, is a very personal matter and it would be a
huge blow to one if one ends up in such a situation. This study found that
unemployment rate and property crime were strongly correlated. Other less robust
correlations were found between unemployment and deterioration of skill sets. These
social impacts of unemployment has been summed up with a personal anecdotal
example in the video made.

Looking at it from a broader angle, unemployment also poses problems to the

society. Not only does it represents wasted labour resources, it also means that the
government would have a lowered tax revenue since income tax only applies to those
which have a stable working income.

To correct this problem, a key policy implementation would be that of Fiscal

policy. By hiring people to work on government projects to improve infrastructure in the
Philippines, this would provide the necessary stimulus to the economy to create a
conducive environment that would boost investor confidence, while providing an
increase in jobs in the short term. However, the problem is that the unemployed may not
consist largely of construction workers and thus retraining is necessary.

Therefore, to complement our first solution, we propose retraining for current

workers in the country, such that they will have the relevant skills required for the jobs
available in the country. Nonetheless, this approach again has its limitation, which is
that the gestation period for retraining may be too long.

Hence we present our final recommendation which ties the jobs and the people
together. This solution involves reforms in the education system such that future
batches of students will come into the workforce with the necessary skills immediately.
This reduces the need for retraining of workers and hence would ease the burden which
the gestation period of retraining may cause.

Through this multi-pronged approach, we believe that unemployment in the

Philippines can be reduced substantially, and that the country will finally be able to
achieve rapid and sustainable growth. However, we would like to caution that
unemployment is something that is impossible to eradicate completely, because there
may be some instances where workers are unwilling to change and improve
themselves. We would also like to caution that if the recommendations are applied in
isolation, they would be ineffective in tackling the problem.

In conclusion, while the unemployment situation in Philippines is bleak at the

moment, it can be improved if the government is willing to take firm and decisive action
immediately.