OP-ED COLUMNS – MANILA OFW- Labor outlook, workers look out
KNOWING a country’s manpower resource is vital to planning and development. But that is just one part of the equation.
The other side of the spectrum is the current and forecasted ability of a nation’s employers to absorb the labor force in the various sectors, mainly industry, manufacturing, agriculture and services.
For what good would a huge force of active, ready and willing labor force have if there are no available jobs to be had? More importantly, if the opportunities that exist at home cannot assure wages that go even just a little over survival rate, looking inward does not bode well.
Then there is the issue of sustained growth in the sectors that members of the active labor force must know to determine if staying in one occupation will bear fruit for a specified period, not on a year-to-year basis.
Australia’s five-year projection, for example, for 2018 to 2023, projects sustained increase in employment for 17 of the 19 broad industries.
“Healthcare and social assistance is projected to make the largest contribution to employment growth (increasing by 250,300), followed by construction (118,800), education and training (113,000) and professional, scientific and technical services (106,600). Together, these four industries are projected to provide almost two-thirds (or 66.4 percent) of total employment growth over the five years to May 2023.”
In addition, the Department of Home Affairs “produces employment projections by industry, occupation, skill level and region for the following five-year period.”
The projections are based on the Australian government’s budget and labor force survey. Active participation of the government in supporting the needs of industry while ensuring that the workers needed have the required skills set is necessary.
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Most in-demand occupations
In May 2018 the Department of Employment’s projections show 12,564,000 Australians employed in all industries. In 2023, employment is projected to be 13,450,100. What occupations would be needed in various industries?
Accountants remain an in-demand occupation, especially in the Northern Territory (where employers experienced widespread shortages). Regional Victoria exhibited a need for accountants, while South Australia has difficulty recruiting general or taxation accountants.
Reflecting the employment projections, the other occupations in demand or in short supply are those in agriculture and horticulture, automotive trades, construction trades, building professions and architecture and building technicians, engineering trades, professions and technicians.
Of the nine healthcare occupations, those in child care, health and social assistance, sonographers, optometrists and medical diagnostic radiographers lead the list. For registered nurses, there is good and bad news. The bad news is that the employment outlook report left out nurses.
However, the list of occupations eligible to pursue permanent residency still include nurses. And, in the running total of individual occupations eligible for permanent residency through the various skilled migration streams, 15,672 spots are still available for RNs who can meet the eligibility requirements under the skilled independent subclass (189), state or territory nominated (subclass 190); employer nominated (subclass 186) as well as the regional subclasses.
Other visas for RNs in the temporary category include the training visas (subclass 407); temporary graduate (SC 485) — those who have completed specific academic programs related to the occupation and the temporary skill shortage (SC 482) — for RNs being sponsored by employers who cannot find qualified nurses for the job.
As for sonographers, the shortage had been felt since at least 2007. Vacancies for optometrists remained unfilled for six weeks after listing according to the department report.
Canada’s Labor Market Outlook shows shortage for registered nurses, specialist physicians, general practitioners, audiologists and speech language pathologists, physiotherapists (PTs), and psychologists. The complete report is available from the 2017 Canadian Occupational Projection Systems which specifies imbalances between labor demand and supply for a 10-year period (2017-2026).
The health-related occupations combined with seven occupations in applied sciences and three other occupations was projected to need 1,203,200 qualified applicants.
Overall job openings for the period 2017-2026 is projected to be 6.35 million “due to economic growth and replacement needs. Like Australia, Canada’s population is turning gray. Two-thirds of the 6.3 million occupations will require post-secondary education with more than half expected to be filled by new immigrants, the report continues.
Consequently, Canada has laid out a red welcome mat to new immigrants, continuously increasing the number of immigrants the country intends to accept, while Australia, New Zealand and the United States are on the opposite side of the immigration freeway, limiting the numbers being admitted.
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PH labor and employment outlook
In 2013, the International Labor Organization (ILO) report on the Philippines Employment Projection Model said 41.3 million Filipinos in various occupations would be employed. Laborers and unskilled workers top the list at 12.9 million, followed by farmers, foresters and fishermen (6.1 million), with government officials, those in special interest organizations, corporate executives, managers, managing proprietors and supervisors in the 6 million total.
Service workers, shop and market sales workers were projected to be 4.7 million, followed by trades and related workers — 3.072 million. The rest of the occupations projected to provide employment were for plant and machine operators and assemblers — 2.588 million; clerks, 2.458 million; professionals, technicians and associate professionals with approximately 3.2 million combined.
The 2013 report was spot-on in terms of Filipinos employed in all occupations. In October 2018 – 41.325 million employed albeit two years too late.
Philippine Statistics Authority data show that more than half of employed persons are in the services sector and 26 percent of those employed were in the elementary occupations — laborers, cleaners, helpers.
In November 2018, the government announced the increase of the daily minimum wage for workers to P500, which would convert to P12,000 a month.
After the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) corrected reports that the P10,000-budget for a typical Filipino family was only “hypothetical,” the question now is whether or not the agency has a figure for a “decent” life.
In an interview with One News’ “The Chiefs” on June 6, 2018, NEDA Undersecretary Rosemarie Edillon “admitted that the agency does not have a ‘convention’ over the concept” of the required wages to have a decent life.
Edillon said during the interview that the realistic target is for the country is to “become an upper-middle income country” by 2022, where an individual earns $5,000 a year, or around P21,600 in a month on average.”
Edillon’s claim of P10,000 monthly income for a Filipino family of five, was corrected by Socioeconomic Planning Secretary and NEDA Director General Ernesto Pernia, who said that a “decent income” for a family of five would be P42,000 a month.
So, even if jobs are available, the increased P500-daily minimum wage would not be an incentive to stay home, but instead to look outward by becoming an overseas Filipino worker.
A 2018 PSA survey shows that of the 2.3 million OFWs, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia remains the top destination. Over 24 percent of this number are skilled workers in Saudi, with Hong Kong, Kuwait, Taiwan and Qatar bringing up the remaining numbers at 6.3 percent, 5.7 percent, 5.5 percent and 5.2 percent, respectively.
The POEA deployment validates this outlook of Filipino workers. Of the top 10 list of overseas jobs in c016, workers in elementary occupations topped the list at 358,605, service and sales workers came a distant second at 56,617, with Craft and related trades workers closely behind at 51,607.
With the abovementioned labor and employment outlook of at least two countries — Australia and Canada — Filipinos lacking decent work and wage opportunities in the country will continue to look outwards.
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