Ten-year plan toward full employment
But in implementing the plan.
ON Sept. 22, 1995, the First National Employment Summit (NES) was held at the PICC, with the theme “Hanapbuhay: Sagot sa Kahirapan” (Employment: Response to Poverty).
On Sept. 27, 2023, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. signed into law Republic Act 11962, or the Trabaho Para sa Bayan Act (Jobs for the Nation Act). To realize the aspirations of this new law, the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE), the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), and the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) joined hands to craft their all-of-government, all-ofsociety approach at improving job generation.
A 10-year employment plan was presented to the President during the 2024 National Employment Summit on June 26-27. The summit’s theme was “Trabaho Para sa Bayan: Maunlad na Negosyo at Dekalidad na Trabaho, Daan sa Bagong Pilipinas.”
The 2024 Summit
The recent employment summit brought together government officials, leaders of labor groups, top executives from private business organizations, and representatives from micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), the informal sector, and civil society. They witnessed the signing and turnover of the 10-year employment plan.
Before the Summit, Labor Undersecretary Carmela Torres led the DoLE’s preparation of the groundwork, with assistance and support from the International Labor Organization (ILO), Institute for Labor Studies (ILS), Bureau of Local Employment (BLE), Planning Service, and DoLE’s regional offices that participated in regional consultations.
Undersecretary Torres said, “The outputs of the regional consultations are the building blocks of the employment covenant in the formulation and realization of the 10-year Trabaho Para sa Bayan (TPB) Plan,” which was signed by NEDA Secretary Arsenio Balisacan, Labor Secretary Bienvenido Laguesma, and Trade Secretary Alfredo Pascual, and submitted to the President during the NES on June 27, 2024.
The second NES aims to “forge commitments among social partners, workers, employers, organizations, and sectoral and other relevant stakeholders towards developing the 10-year TPB Plan.”
During the Summit, President Marcos said, “Let us lay the groundwork to ensure a decade of meaningful employment and economic growth. The covenant and the TPB Plan will ensure the interagency and multipartite approach to achieving our objectives for productive, remunerative, and decent employment generation.”
During the Summit, Dr. Sangheon Lee, director of the ILO Employment Policy, Job Creation and Livelihoods Department, provided a comprehensive global overview of trends and policies that impact the global and Philippine labor markets. Lee suggested that unemployment should not be the only labor market indicator, as “jobs gaps are broader than unemployment, covering those people who are inactive for various reasons… On average, job gaps are often twice larger than unemployment.”
Dr. Lee also observed, “In the Philippines, the overall jobs gap is lower than the global average, but it is high among female workers. The Philippines continues to confront the issue of young people who are Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET). It makes complex for the youth to move between work, training and education.”
Dr. Lee also stressed, “Clearly and quite often, informal employment could be a trap: once you get in there, it is hard to get out without effective policy support.”
For his part, Secretary Laguesma emphasized, “We must deliberately aim for the creation of employment opportunities of better quality, that are sustainable and more remunerative, and that provide decent working conditions for all workers. We must also aim for work opportunities that fully respect the fundamental principles and rights at work and provide adequate and inclusive social protection, including facilitating just transitions.”
Khalid Hassan, director of the ILO Country Office for the Philippines, assured the summit social partners, “We will continue to support the country in addressing employment challenges. The world of work is rapidly evolving, and it is crucial that we stay ahead of the curve through strong collaboration and social dialogue.”
Summit achievements
As an employer representative in the National Employment Summit, I surmise that the summit achieved the following:
– Provided a venue to understand the global trends that impact employment, poverty, competitiveness, and other issues faced by the Philippines;
– Highlighted the need for a holistic approach to solving poverty and unemployment issues;
– Stressed the strong need for social dialogue among government, workers, employers, education and training institutions, parents, and civil society in general;
– Provided us insights to rethink current policies and strategies now being deployed to arrest poverty, unemployment, social injustice, and other societal ills.
Summits do not solve the country’s problems or come up with a single solution. This summit has simply laid the groundwork for a 10-year master plan that can solve the problems. The devil is in the details. The bigger problem is not in the planning
Education and training
Over the past several decades, lasting solutions to poverty and unemployment have been wanting. Except for a few silver linings in other international competitions, 15-year-old Filipino students fare miserably in reading, mathematics, and science in OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). In the Philippine context, roughly a million 15-year-olds and college graduates join the workforce every year. If the average new entrant into the workplace cannot read or do basic computations, how are they expected to perform? Even if they complete their college education, how will they cope with the stringent requirements for more decent jobs?
We cannot overemphasize the importance of education and training in preparing the youth for gainful employment or other forms of compensable work. Technology’s disruptive effect will continue to impact the Philippine landscape of work, education and training. Technology will render millions of jobs obsolete but will create new ones. Workers must learn 40 percent more new skills in order for them to keep the same job for five years. New entrants to the workplace will have to learn new technological (hard) and soft skills to qualify for jobs in a technologydriven workplace.
The newly created 10-year employment plan must, by necessity, include programs for massive reskilling for current jobs that need new skills and upskilling for new or higher-level jobs that will be required by the changing market. Government agencies (DepEd, CHEd, Tesda), basic and higher education institutions in both public and private sectors, and training institutions can no longer operate in a vacuum. They must throw away their blinders, look at the bigger picture, and collaborate with social partners and stakeholders, including industry and civil society, to make relevant contributions to creating a constant supply of globally competitive Filipino professionals and workers.
The other side of the employment equation is the demand for jobs. Jobs are created via investment. Investments naturally flow to destinations that are investor-friendly. Even if we have a prepared workforce, if our policies do not encourage investments (in comparison with other countries), it will be difficult to achieve full employment and reduce poverty incidence.