Business groups to launch online jobs portal in March

MANILA  —The Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI), in partnership with the Employers Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP) and other industry groups, is set launch a new online jobs portal next month as part of efforts to help in matching employers and workers in the country.

PCCI labor committee chairman Arturo C. Guerrero III said on Friday that they will launch this online platform in March, alongside the job fair that they will conduct in the same month.

“There are many people looking for jobs but are unable to find jobs. But there are also many employers who are looking for employees but cannot find the people to hire,” Guerrero said during a forum at the Kamuning Bakery in Quezon City.

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“We will match the people looking for jobs with those who are providing jobs,” Guerrero, who is also a director at the ECOP, aid further.

He said that they were working with the SY-led SM Group, one of the largest employers in the Philippines, in this project.

The ECOP and the SM Group has partnered for the jobs creation initiative called “Project Jobs,” which aims to create 1 million new jobs for Filipinos this year.

In a recent interview, ECOP President Sergio R. Ortiz-Luis Jr. said these would mostly be jobs in the service sector,  IT (information technology), manufacturing, and construction.

In December last year, the proportion of unemployed Filipinos to total labor force sank to another record-low, with the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) recording 1.6 million jobless people, which is down from the 1.83 million in the preceding month.

READ: PH jobless rate eased to record low of 3.1% in Dec. 2023

This means that 658,000 more people joined the country’s labor force during the period.

The government’s statistics agency also said this was equivalent to a jobless rate to 3.1 percent, the lowest since the PSA adopted a new definition of “unemployment” back in 2005.

It also beats the previous record-low unemployment rate of 3.6 percent recorded in November 2023.