A top official of JobStreet, the leading online job portal in the Philippines, said the country may have already reached its “rock bottom” after the number of jobless Filipinos reached 27 million in July or five months into COVID-19 lockdown.
“Hopefully, the 27 million is rock bottom already. We don’t expect to lose more jobs anymore,” JobStreet Philippines Country Manager Philip Gioca said in a virtual briefing on Wednesday.
“We can see a trajectory that is growing,” he added.
Among the things that will drive this, he said, is the stimulus package that will be released for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) under the Bayanihan To Recover As One Act or Bayanihan 2 being pushed for in congress.
Under this proposed law, the government should provide credit assistance to MSMEs, who are one of the badly hit sub-sectors among all businesses in the country.
Based on the latest job report of JobStreet, over 60 percent of all job seekers in the Philippines now were part of retrenchments triggered by COVID-19 pandemic.
Of the 60 percent, 17 percent were permanently retrenched and 43 percent found themselves temporarily not working.
Most of the employees who were retrenched are the ones who had been working for an MSME or in organizations with less than 500 employees, the JobStreet report said.
The report also showed that the hardest hit industries are tourism and travel; food and beverage; hospitality and catering; architecture, building, and construction; and education.
To recall, a Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey data showed that 27 million adults in the Philippines are jobless as of July this year.
Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque celebrated this, saying that unemployment “could have been worse.”
Meanwhile, as many as 10,000 jobs across 700 government agencies will be up for grabs at the forthcoming Online Career Fair organized by JobStreet in partnership with the Civil Service Commission (CSC).
CSC Commissioner Aileen Lizada said she hopes that many people will be interested to join the government’s workforce.
“Let's serve the public together,” she said in a virtual briefing.
The career fair, according to Gioca, will run from September 14 to 18, but interested participants may already create an account in the JobStreet platform to participate in the event.
Interested applicants can register in the virtual job fair by creating and downloading the Personal Data Sheet through the Online Career Fair microsite, upload it to their JobStreet profile as resume, and bookmark the website for easy reference.
Among the available posts, 28 percent are from Calabarzon and Mimaropa, 18 percent are from Central Visayas, and 15 percent are from Western Visayas, she said.
There would also be job openings in Northern Mindanao, Bicol Region, CARAGA, and National Capital Region.
Meanwhile, the top available job roles in the Online Career Fair are Deputy Register of Deeds, Admin Officer, Attorney, Accountant, Procurement Officer, among others.