12M new jobs in next 6 years

BEIJING—Labor and Employment Secretary Silvestre Bello III said there would be 12 million new jobs by the end of the Duterte administration in light of the government’s infrastructure development program.

Bello made the statement during the Dutertenomics forum in Beijing yesterday, noting that the “golden age of infrastructure” would also come with the “golden age of jobs, jobs and jobs.”

The government plans to spend P8.4 trillion on infrastructure projects, increasing the share of infrastructure spending in the gross domestic product (GDP) from 5.4 percent this year to 7.4 percent in 2022.

“We are looking at not less than 12 million [new] jobs for our countrymen. This will address not only the problem of unemployment but this will also address the final goal of President Duterte in repatriating our OFWs (overseas Filipino workers) who are in different parts of the world,” he said.

On the sidelines of the forum, Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto M. Pernia told reporters that there were a million new jobs more or less every year. This means the current projection of Bello indicated that job creation would have to double up to 2022.

“We would be able to attract back our OFWs because many of them have technical skills,” he said.

When asked which sector would account for the biggest share of the new employment, he said that it would be blue collar ones, adding that the push for infrastructure development would have multiplier effects.

The cabinet officials first introduced the “build, build, build” initiative at the Dutertenomics forum held in Manila last month. They also brought the forum to Cambodia earlier this May where they spoke with foreign media and investors there.

The 12 million projection is a welcome news to the labor sector, especially since the unemployment rate as of January this year was 6.6 percent, representing 2.76 million jobless Filipinos, higher than the 6.6 percent or 2.46 million jobless in the same month in 2016, according to the Labor Force Survey by the Philippine Statistics Authority. In spite of the increase, this was still lower than the average of 7.4 percent recorded from 2006 to 2015.