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By Katrina Mennen A. Valdez, Reporter
EMPLOYMENT growth in privately held businesses
slightly dipped this year, according to the Grant Thornton
International’s annual International Business Report.
Job creation slowed down to six percent compared
with last year’s eight percent increase.
Accounting firm Punongbayan & Araullo
(P&A), a member of the Grant Thornton network, released the
Philippine results.
Employment data from the National Statistical
Coordination Board showed that both unemployment and underemployment
are down so far this year.
In January last year, unemployment and
underemployment stood at 7.8 percent and 21.5 percent, respectively.
In the same month this year, both figures were down to 7.4 percent
and 18.9 percent respectively.
Official data also showed that last year,
924,000 new jobs were generated, or more than enough to accommodate
the 749,000 new entrants to the labor force.
Earlier, the Grant Thornton report showed that
58 percent of Filipino business leaders were having a difficult time
expanding their businesses due to the lack of skilled workers in the
country, making the Philippines the top three worldwide whose
business growth is limited most by this human resource problem.
“There are available jobs out there, but
what’s happening is that employers are having a hard time finding
people with the right skills sets to fill up these positions,”
Greg Navarro, P&A managing partner said.
Navarro said that Filipino engineers are leaving
for Russia and the Persian Gulf states, while journalists are moving
to Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.
“[Our] geologists are also moving to China and
Australia. At the rate they are leaving, the employers they leave
behind are having to play catch-up. Thus, they have to match that
pace when they search for, and train, people to replace these
workers. That’s a tall order,” he said.
Globally, employment in privately held
businesses is up by four percent this year. This is a slight
improvement on 2007, when global employment grew by 3 percent.
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