Unemployment

The Philippine unemployment rate has skyrocketed to 27.5 percent. That is an estimated 12.1 million people out of work. And Noynoy Aquino does not even know what happened. He called a full Cabinet meeting to find out. And damn if he got any answers.

I don't know the answers either. But I have some pretty good ideas. Here is one – any country that can watch the Vhong Navarro saga unremorsefully for weeks should be a country full of people difficult to hire in an economy that claims to have made it to global standards.

Why should I hire a prospect who cannot even tell if Reykjavik is a member of a boy band or the name of an exotic drug and yet is able to spell Vhong Navarro complete with the "H" with eyes getting moist on why the actor was even mauled at all.

Here is another– try opening your tv early in the morning to take in the news. It is always about some car meeting an accident in Metro Manila or a stabbing in one of its seedy side streets, for an audience that is nationwide.

A stabbing in a Sampaloc alley does not improve the chances of a hopeful job applicant in Cagayan de Oro to land employment. On the contrary, a daily fare of such kind of irrelevant yet frightening news can deter a prospective investor from creating jobs or send him packing away with the jobs already here.

We are simply too big on the mundane and useless and too little on the things that really matter. We love to copy the things that work in other countries without taking into account the circumstances that could make the same things work or fail here.

A few days ago, because classes in the United States open in September, two of our premier institutions – the University of the Philippines and the Ateneo – followed suit. But not all campuses of the UP will open in September. Some will stay as is, meaning they will open in June as usual.

But if you think that is not enough to be confusing to students, along came the University of Santo Tomas, announcing that it will be opening classes, not in September like UP and Ateneo, but in July, for reasons all its own.

I don't know if this is becoming a trend, but I sure hope no more college or university will start announcing the opening of classes in August, or for good measure, in December. Because if it can get confusing over school opening, it can get even more confusing in real life.

And real life means, to a great extent, finding a job. Somewhere in there is the reason why unemployment is going up. And if government still doesn't get it, then chances are it will never get it, just like how Noynoy still hasn't.

Noynoy still hasn't gotten it because he has oversimplified things. He thought that by merely being the son of Cory and Ninoy, he already got what it took to be president. He could have refused the candidacy. But he took the job.

At least in the private sector, the requirements and qualifications are more stringent, hence the fewer who can qualify to be successfully employed. And in the private sector, it is easier for the inefficient to be fired, and not to be hired again.

Noynoy has hired three people to the Office of the Press Secretary, a job that normally hired one. That is not possible in the private sector, where multi-tasking is increasingly swinging into place in more and more companies, thus cutting even the number of jobs reserved for the highly qualified.

But as I said, Noynoy, as head of a government that is high on the "bahala na" will find it difficult to appreciate the dynamics of gainful employment and will always move in the direction that is easy but meaningless.