More young workers seek local employment - DOLE

MANILA, Philippines - More young workers and other jobseekers are opting for local employment, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) said yesterday.

Labor Undersecretary Danilo Cruz said a majority of those who trooped to the government’s recent job fair at the Rizal Park in Manila applied for local vacancies.

Close to 9,000 jobseekers, mostly new graduates, registered for available job vacancies here and abroad, he added.

Cruz said among the recorded applicants, there were 17,000 applications for local positions, and only over 2,000 for overseas positions.

“You might think there is discrepancy in the figure, but the number of applications for local positions was way above the registered jobseekers, because many of them applied for more than one local vacancy,” he said.

However, Cruz said, many of new graduates and other jobseekers applied for local employment probably because they would not qualify for overseas employment.

“Many of the applicants are new graduates and therefore they still do not have the experience and skills required for overseas so they applied for local employment,” he said.

Cruz said based on DOLE data, only 48 were hired on the spot during the Independence Day job fair.

The “hatch” or on-the-spot hiring was low because there was no pre-registration, but more than 2,000 were referred for further interview, he added.