There’s still some charm left in the UP Diploma, but it’s no longer a foolproof guarantee of a dream job.

UP School of Labor and Industrial Relations (SOLAIR) Dean Jorge V. Sibal says that employers still prefer graduates of the University over other jobseekers but the severity of unemployment in the country could limit their career options. He points out that since the unemployment rate has been on a steady rise these past years, even college graduates are finding it difficult to get a job.

In “Public Forum-Dialogue on the Exodus of Mission-Critical Personnel and Professionals,” which was held last March 4 at the UP SOLAIR Auditorium, it was revealed that from 1980 to 2003, the country’s economy managed to create 14.7 million new jobs but, within the same period, 17.7 million newcomers also entered the labor force. In other words, the additional 0.6% jobs that were created were not enough to absorb the 1.4% increase in the labor force. As a result, unemployment among the schooled segment of the labor force increased as well—29% among high school graduates and 17% among college graduates and undergraduates.

Dr. Virgel C. Binghay, coordinator of UP SOLAIR’s Graduate Studies Program, traces the country’s unemployment woes to the decision of many companies to relocate their manufacturing plants to other countries. Multinational companies, he says, now seem to prefer China, India, Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia because these countries offer cheaper labor and bigger market for their products.

Bright spots
In spite of the overall slump in the economy, Dr. Binghay says there are still employment opportunities for new graduates. Among the local industries, the bright spots are found in business process outsourcing, which includes the call centers and medical transcription services; advertising, which is especially in need of graphic animators; information technology; tourism; fastfood, since the likes of Jollibee, McDonald’s, and Chowking continue to open new outlets and, therefore, are perpetually in need of store managers, staff, and service crew; retail, thanks to the proliferation of malls; and human resource management, particularly organizational development.

Dr. Binghay observes that these opportunities all fall under the service sector. This is not good because there should be a balance among the service, agricultural, and manufacturing sectors. “Especially in our case,” he points out, “since most of our workers belong to the agriculture sector. While we welcome the developments in the service industry, we must be wary of the slump in agriculture and manufacturing because it means disenfranchisement of the workers in these sectors.”

Indeed, in 2004, the service sector ate up the biggest chunk of the employment pie with 48% while agriculture came in second with 36%. Manufacturing, meanwhile, posted the lowest share with 9.7%. Dean Sibal, however, points out that “most of the jobs created in agriculture and service sectors were low-quality jobs.”

Opportunities overseas
Looking for jobs abroad is another option for new graduates. Interestingly enough, opportunities for Filipino workers in the international market are now a good mix of blue- and white-collar jobs. Dr. Binghay says Filipino workers are still in demand as domestic helpers, construction workers, entertainers, and seafarers, but they are now also getting offers from the health care, aviation, mining, teaching, and information technology industries.

Demands in the aviation industry are particularly surprising, says Dr. Binghay: “We’re losing a lot of our pilots, aircraft engineers and technicians, and traffic controllers to other countries, especially India and the Middle East.” Even the linemen of the Manila Electric Co., he adds, have also been getting job offers from Australia, New Zealand, Oceania, and Papua New Guinea, among many others.

UP graduates, notes Dean Sibal, will most likely find themselves in the small but highly-paid group of knowledge workers who are mostly based in the US and Europe. “Although small in numbers, Filipino knowledge workers turn over more than one half of the entire remittances since many of them are highly paid professionals and technical workers,” he explains. Next to India, the Philippines supplies the most number of knowledge workers to the rest of the world.

“Lately, however, some local industries have felt the crippling effects of the loss of mission-critical professionals and technicians,” Dean Sibal explains. These critical sectors include aviation, shipping, information technology, steel, petrochemical, telecommunications, health care, and education. “We need to temper sending our mission-critical personnel and professionals abroad,” he says. “We must bear in mind what management guru Peter Drucker said: Knowledge workers are the key to competitiveness of enterprises and national economies. This is the reason developed countries deliberately pirate the knowledge workers of developing countries. They need to be ahead in competing with the rest of the world at the expense of developing countries.”

Regulating the exodus of workers, according to Dr. Binghay, is actually done in some countries. “Yes, I recognize that part of globalization is the free movement of people,” he says. “But can you imagine our hospitals without competent doctors and nurses or our airports without traffic controllers? Our country will be paralyzed. We must also protect our country.”

Other options
Dean Sibal says that those who cannot afford to leave the country can look into informal and semi-formal entrepreneurial opportunities. “We have heard of fresh UP graduates who have successfully operated new franchises in malls,” he notes. “Some of them are now expanding their businesses all over the country, even Asia.”

Yet another alternative for new graduates is to go back to school to pursue a master’s degree. Aside from acquiring more knowledge, competencies, and skills, some students turn to graduate schools in the hopes of landing a job through their classmates, most of whom are already working.

Both Dean Sibal and Dr. Binghay, however, do not approve of this strategy. “Except in pure sciences, I would not advise new college graduates to pursue graduate studies right away. Studying and applying what you learned in school in your place of work or practice of profession is the best combination for a successful graduate student,” says Dean Sibal. “So go get a job first, even if you start at the bottom of the organization ladder.”

Inexperienced students in graduate schools also are a problem for professors, points out Binghay. “That is especially true for us in SOLAIR where we teach about the world of work,” he explains. “A student who does not have any work experience will not be able to relate to our discussions. When we talk about Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), for example, what does that student know about CBA other than what he or she has read in the book? There are a lot of things about the work place that are not in the books, so our discussions are enriched by the individual or collective experiences of both the professors and students.”

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