LEGAZPI CITY - It would be a vigorous job-hunting for the fresh graduates this summer of 2009, as the number of jobless Filipinos grew bigger and hit the highest unemployment rate at 7.7 percent compared to last year, based from the National Statistics Office (NSO) latest survey.
In the Bicol region, the recent economic situation was recorded the highest underemployment rate at 31.2 percent in the second quarter (October 2008) among other regions of the country. However, the number of underemployed Bicolanos declined about 4.6 percent this year, a survey conducted by NSO-Region V show.
The global economic downturn is now choking Bicolanos, as the unemployment rate (2nd quarter, 2008) rose by one (1) percent point from last year’s rate.
The Labor Force Data released by the NSO regional office reveal that for December 2008, the unemployment rate of the region was placed at 5.2 percent, showing an increase from 4.4 last quarter (July 2008).
With more than 109,000 Bicolanos who are still waiting for job opportunities, Director Alex E. Maraan of the DOLE's Region 5 Office said that this could be the effect of the job layoffs in some companies in the region and resulted to the close of some small businesses in Legazpi City due to debts and bankruptcy.
On the other hand, the Regional Bureau of Labor and Employment Statistics (BLES)showed that 2.004 million workers in Bicol are employed in the December 2008 survey conducted by the BLES.
Further, a drop by .08 percent was recorded by the NSO in the employment rate of December 2008 (95.6%) from 94.8 percent in April 2008 which is not surprising in Sothern Tagalog(including Bicol region) because these regions were hosting large export-oriented industries adversely affected by the global downturn.
The NSO defines the unemployed as those aged 15 years and over, who have no jobs or are not running a business and are actively looking for jobs but can not find any.
The unemployed also include those who at the time of the survey were not looking for jobs because they believed there were none available, or because of temporary disability or sickness or bad weather, or because they had pending job applications or interviews.
The underemployed are those who want to have additional hours of work in their present job or to have an additional job, or to have a new job with longer working hours.
Meanwhile, the DOLE, in cooperation with colleges and universities is offering a job fair to all the graduating students for job-matching opportunities.
A job fair was held last March 9 (2nd week of March) at the Students’ Lounge of Bicol University, College of Arts and Letters which was opened to all seniors and job hunters.
Johana Vi E. Gasga
Basic data source:
DOLE regional office
Legazpi City
Ilang beses ako nag-edit kasi mali spelling ko ng opportunities.
ReplyDeletehuhu. Nakakahiya. palaging oppUrtunities nalalagay ko.