INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines — Jobs will continue to be scarce in the Asia-Pacific region that is barely recovering from the loss of 54 million jobs when COVID-19 hit in 2020, the International Labor Organization (ILO) said in its employment outlook report released on Monday.
“On the surface, employment trends look positive (but) there remain numerous signs that the region’s labor market is not yet back on its precrisis track,” said the ILO, projecting the job gap to rise next year as employment numbers are only 2 percent above 2019 prepandemic figures.
The ILO warned of a continued jobs gap of 22 million this year that is “projected to increase again to 26 million in 2023 given the headwinds to growth foreseen in current geopolitical global and regional context,” it said.
In the region where the Philippines is grouped among lower-middle-income economies with its Southeast Asian neighbors Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, and Timor-Leste, the ILO said information technology (IT) and other information services was the region’s fastest growing sector in jobs in the past three decades.
Only 9.4 million worked in the sector last year, which corresponded to just 0.5 percent of total employment; but three-quarters of the eight million IT jobs between 1991 and 2021 went to men, the report said.
The region’s three largest employment sectors are agriculture, manufacturing, and wholesale and retail trade, which accounted for 1.1 billion workers in 2021 or 60 percent of the 1.9 billion workforce.
However, the ILO said workers in these sectors typically get low wages, poor working conditions, and low job and income security.
“Despite half a century of economic growth, the fact remains that most Asia-Pacific workers are employed in sectors that the ‘Asian miracle’ has passed by,” said ILO senior economist Sara Elder, lead author of the report.
“The challenge moving forward is to increase and sustain policy attention and public investment to achieve decent work and inclusion in all sectors, especially those where the majority of people work,” she added.
Infection wave
With the employment crisis rising, Philippine health authorities are wary of a possible wave of as high as 5,000 COVID-19 cases during Christmas because people gather and might transmit the more immune-evasive BQ.1 Omicron subvariant.
Infectious disease specialist, Dr. Edsel Salvana, told the Laging Handa public briefing: “If there is a chance that this will result in a higher number of cases, it won’t be that big; it might not exceed 5,000 cases. Most of this will be mild and they don’t need to be hospitalized.”
Salvana, a member of the Technical Advisory Group of the Department of Health (DOH), assured the public that those inoculated with primary and booster doses of vaccines will be protected from severe and critical COVID-19.
He hoped that the surge during the 2021 Christmas holiday season during the first Omicron wave will not happen, recalling that the cases in January this year were found to be caused by the Omicron BA.2 subvariant that was more infectious compared to the BA.1 subvariant that is dominant in other countries.
“If cases increase because people gather during Christmas and more go out, I do not think it will be as dramatic as the number of cases we saw last January, after Christmas. Even if the cases increase, it would only be slightly,” he added.
As the virus is still mutating, it is important for the public to know how to protect themselves such as by getting booster doses or by continuing to wear face masks, Salvana said.
The DOH on Monday said the average daily COVID-19 cases still hovered around 1,000, with the majority of them reported in Metro Manila.
It reported 1,083 more people positive of the virus out of around 10,000 who underwent RT-PCR laboratory testing. It also confirmed 14 more deaths.