Picture this: you, in your toga, walking along the long aisle, waiting for your name to be called, excited to get hold of that diploma, or medal (if you are an honor student), until that final moment came when you could release a sigh of relief because you’re done with college. But after the wild whopping has subsided, will the government be able to produce jobs for the graduating batch of 2009 when in fact unemployment has become a regular face in Philippine society?
BY THEA BANAG AND ANGELO HONGO
Bulatlat
Picture this: you, in your toga, walking along the long aisle, waiting for your name to be called, excited to get hold of that diploma, or medal (if you are an honor student), until that final moment came when you could release a sigh of relief because you’re done with college.
So you’ve graduated. But that only means one thing. You’re old enough to work for your own money, and fend for your own needs and wants.
But after the wild whopping has subsided, will the government be able to produce jobs for the graduating batch of 2009 when in fact unemployment has become a regular face in Philippine society?
What the numbers show
According to figures from the Commission on Higher Education, there are approximately 520,000 graduates this year. Their future is not yet crystal clear as there is still no figure on the jobs the government expects to generate. Last year the government was able to produce 480,000 wage and salary jobs, not enough to absorb all the graduates that year. The dilemma for the government now is, how could all the graduates this be absorbed especially since the issue of unemployment is one of the government’s most obvious weaknesses.
Based on the latest figures released by the National Statistics Office (NSO), unemployment rose to 7.7 percent during the fourth quarter of 2008, an increase from the unemployment rate of 7.3 percent during the same period last year. More and more Filipinos are unemployed – without a job and looking for one, if we go by the government’s definition of unemployment. Such figure may not even include the migrants who have sought employment abroad. This translates into difficult times ahead for graduates hoping to land a job that would fit their degrees.
IBON Foundation, a research group tackling socio-economic issues, released statistics that paint a worse unemployment situation. According to figures from IBON, there are approximately 4.3 million unemployed, constituting 11.2 percent of the labor force. This figure does not yet include the 6.2 million underemployed Filipinos.
With all these statistics, what is in store for the hopeful graduates of 2009?
Survival of the fittest
In a society where names either make or break a person, it is quite unusual that a graduate from a very prestigious learning institute will have a hard time finding the perfect job. But as they say, in this game of life, only the fit survives. Now, what does it really mean to be ‘fit’?
Paula Pulido, a graduating Comparative Literature student from the University of the Philippines (UP), believes that the school you came from counts a lot.
“Iba pa rin y’ung pag sinabi mo na taga-UP ka, may impact, eh. Parang, wow, taga UP ka? Edge yun sa iba eh,” (It makes a difference when you say you are from UP. It’s like, wow, you’re from UP? It’s an edge over the others), Pulido said. “At saka yung title, kapag MA or Doctoral, parang iba yung dating” (And when you have a title, like an MA or a doctorate, it makes a difference.)
