Tubera, RJ L.

TTH 2:35 pm 4:05 pm CS4 ECON 111 2/12/13 4M Jobs a Year Needed to Eradicate Poverty by 2016 - NEDA (http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/business/02/08/13/4m-jobs-year-needed-eradicate-poverty-2016neda) The article states how the Philippines would need to generate 3 4 million jobs every year to eradicate poverty by 2016. According to Mr. Arsenio M. Balisacan, Socioeconomic Planning Secretary of the Philippines, it would bring investments to our country worth $3 billion or approximately 122 billion pesos per year. This amount of money could help lessen the unemployment rate in the Philippines and could help lessen or eradicate poverty. Mr. Balisacan also added that, the labor force is growing by 1 1.1 million a year, while roughly a million Filipinos enter the employment force, which adds to the existing 10 million unemployed and underemployed Filipinos. He stressed that the employment generating capacity of our country must be greater than the labor force to reduce our unemployment rate. According to the article, World Bank country director of the Philippines Motoo Konishi gave the Philippines a challenge about its employment rate. He said that, jobs that raise real wages or bring people out of poverty is an overwhelming challenge. One of the economic concepts involved in the article is the unemployment rate. It is a measure of the amount of unemployment or joblessness in a country and is calculated by dividing the number unemployed individuals by all the individuals currently in the labor force or the individuals who are currently working. In the case of our country, one of the factors that hinder us from getting a better economy is our huge unemployment rate. Our country produces so many graduates but only a few of them actually go to the employment force leaving a small percentage of unemployed individuals. The problem lies when that small percentage becomes a considerable amount as time passes, as what our country is suffering nowadays. Currently, our

country has already an existing 10 million unemployed individuals which may increase if the problem is not solved. According to the Tank Ibon Foundation, even if our country registered a high economic growth rate in the second quarter of 2012, it still has the worst unemployment rate in Southeast Asia. That statement is very disturbing considering that our countrys economy is increasing, yet we still have a high unemployment rate. With this, I have tried to formulate several factors which might cause the high unemployment rate in our country. First is Job mismatch, students usually take courses which are not even in-demand in the world or in our country which results in unemployed labor force. I think our government should make a campaign or movement to educate our students on what jobs is in-demand today and in the future so that they could plan on what course to take when they go to college. Second is competition, we must create efficient and reliable workforce so that we could compete in the market of workers worldwide. Because as I see nowadays, many of the workers are not hired because they are not or less qualified for the job they want. Third is that less job opportunity, Our government must focus on creating projects which would create more jobs in our country and more applicable to our country and to our workforce like, agriculture, construction and infrastructure. If our government could only lessen the unemployment rate in our country, I think not only our poverty rate would decrease but also our criminal rate because most of the people would be busy and have money to support their selves.