Jobs recovery seen as market reopens

Signs of jobs recovery are now clear, according to Online recruitment platform JobStreet which said it has observed a 27% increase in job postings in 2021 or since the pandemic struck.

JobStreet Country Manager Philip Gioca said there were 75,000 job postings per day from January to September last year from 59,000 daily job postings in 2020. Job listings in the online platform are now at 75 percent of the pre-pandemic level, je noted.

The figures, he said, suggest that jobs are increasing, and (the) market is reopening,”

Gioca said records show that in 2021, top specializations hired by companies were in customer service with 101,627 jobs followed by education with 83,414, information technology/ computer-software at 53,766, finance-general/cost accounting at 43,797, and clerical administrative support at 42,490 jobs.

Completing the top 10 job hirers last year were healthcare–nurse/medical support and assistant, marketing/business development, human resources, sales-retail/general, and banking/financial services.

In terms of growth, employers in IT/computer software almost doubled the number of hiring in 2021 compared to 2020 figures.

Gioca said JobStreet logged over 105 million job searches last year.

“It only proves that the activity of job-seeking was tremendous in 2021, so you would see that many people, because of the disruptions, were really looking for jobs last year,” he added.

Gioca said there was an increase of searches for blue-collar jobs such as housekeeper, driver, dispatch, and messenger among others, accounting for the highest jump in job searches on JobStreet at 55%.

This was followed by jobs in food, beverage, and restaurant service with 54% increase; hotel management and tourism services — 46% hike; retail and general sales — 42%; architecture and interior design — 42%; personal care, beauty, and fitness services, — 39%; healthcare, pharmacy –37%; clerical/administrative support, 36%; mechanical and automotive engineering, 36%; and civil, construction, and structural engineering, up by 36%.

“Most of them were actually displaced because of the pandemic and majority of them would constitute working in small and medium enterprise (SME) type of employers. If you notice in 2021, really our SMEs were the most affected and impacted by the pandemic,” Gioca added.

Earlier, Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez, who chairs the Task Force Group on Economic Recovery-National Employment Recovery Strategy (TGER-NERS), said the government targets to narrow down the unemployment rate close to pre-pandemic levels of 5 to 5.5%.

The country’s unemployment rate went down to 6.5% in November  2021 from a peak of 17.6% at the height of the pandemic in April 2020. Job shedding and recovery highly depend on restrictions on mobility, Lopez noted.