The Department of Labor and Employment said Thursday that while the global health crisis rendered many Filipinos unemployed, it has also brought into fore a number of "resilient" jobs in the National Capital Region.
The Labor department said they are called "resilient" because they withstood the impact of the outbreak caused by COVID-19.
Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III identified these jobs as those in health care, logistics, Information Technology, business process management, education, and construction.
Under the Health Care and Wellness Sector, the DoLE said, requirements are increasing for medical doctors, nurses, medical and radiologic technologists, pharmacists, psychologists, medical researchers and writers, and wellness trainers and representatives.
Bello said data from the Inter-Agency Task Force for Emerging Communicable Diseases (IATF-EID) revealed that the government through the Department of Health (DoH) has hired a total of 8,056 health workers out of the 10,693 job openings for doctors, nurses, and other health care workers under the emergency hiring program to augment medical front-liners battling the COVID-19 pandemic.
“They were deployed in public hospitals, diagnostic facilities, isolation and quarantine sites, local government units, and other hospitals and COVID-19 referral facilities,” he said.
Bello added that nurses account for the highest number of hires by profession at 2,701, followed by medical technologists at 1,356.
He said there are also more than 10,000 job opportunities in the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry such as customer service representatives, technical support staff, frontline/specialists, supervisors, trainers, managers, and others for the human resources and recruitment, finance, information technology, and marketing sectors.
Bello said they also observed an increased demand for workers in the construction sector specifically for heavy equipment operators and safety engineers.
“The government has significant allocation for the 'Build, Build, Build' program of the government in the proposed national budget for 2021 so we could expect more jobs in the construction towards the following year,” he said.
Demand for on-line instructors are also picking up under the education sector, Bello said, as most schools conduct virtual learning for the new school year.
DoLE said in the logistics sector, demand for transport network and vehicle service drivers is going strong due to a switch in consumers’ buying habits during the pandemic.
According to DoLE NCR Director Sarah Buena Mirasol, the Public Employment Service Office (PESO)-Quezon City facilitated the hiring of at least 500 food service delivery personnel for Food Panda, Lala Jeep, and Grab Food.
PESO-Mandaluyong is also set to facilitate the employment of its locally displaced tricycle drivers.
Mirasol said the resilient jobs were identified from the situation and labor market landscape of the region based on the recently conducted environmental scanning research.
While it is important to develop one’s industry-specific hard skills, Mirasol pointed out that “specific essential skills such as adaptability, technology know-how, creativity and innovation, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, and leadership skills are necessary for workers to cultivate in order to survive and thrive in the new normal.”