THE Department of Labor and Employment (Dole) in Western Visayas has initiated a key employment generators (KEGs) study seen to address job mismatch and underemployment in the region, including Negros Occidental.
Dole-Western Visayas Assistant Regional Director Salome Siaton, who led the 2017 JobsFit Validation Report presentation at the Sugar Workers Development Center in Bacolod City Thursday, October 26, said the region currently has at least 13 priority and three emerging industries.
Siaton reported that priority industries include construction; information and communications technology and other-related services; tourism; hotels, resorts and restaurants; health and wellness; agribusiness and fisheries; manufacturing; power and renewable energy; education; transport and logistics; real estate development; automotive and land transportation; and wholesale and retail.
Emerging industries this year are arts, entertainment and recreation, banking and finance, and cottage industry.
These top employment generators were identified through consultations with stakeholders mainly business sector in 2010 and 2013, which were re-validated this year.
“We are hopeful that through this project, we will be able to foresee what industries would generate employment in the region in the coming years,” Siaton said, adding that it is also the agency’s initiative to address the perennial problem of jobs and skills mismatch.
The Project JobsFit: The Dole 2020 Vision is a labor market signaling study carried out as part of the agency’s resolve to adopt coherent and innovative strategies.
This is in line with its mandate to provide efficient employment facilitation services and respond to prevailing job-skills mismatch underlying the underemployment and underemployment woes in the country.
Siaton said that labor market information is vital in decision-making. The result of the study is seen to guide high school students in choosing what career path to take.
For educational institutions, KEGs report can be part of their curriculum review, particularly in aligning their courses and training programs to the current demand of the industry.
Siaton said that based on the stakeholders statements, the skills requirement of employment generator industries can be met and supplied.
However, there are also those which remained hard-to-fill.
“Some businesses cannot find the required skills from their respective applicants,” she said, pointing out that “there might be gaps on the available courses offered by schools and quality of trainings they provide.”
In the ICT sector, which Negros Occidental is strong, among the hard-to-fill positions identified by the Dole 6 include contact center and technical services representatives, animator, medical transcription editor, developer, and human resource outsourcing specialist.
For construction, meanwhile, hard-to-fill positions are heavy equipment operators and mechanic, experienced carpenter, project engineer, planning and control engineers, among others.
“Hard-to-fill positions in other industries are mostly skills-based also,” Siaton said, adding that one common “gap” identified during the consultations is the English language proficiency of the applicants especially in the ICT industry.
To further communicate the result of the study, copies will be provided by the Dole-Western Visayas to schools and institutions, through the Network of Guidance Counselors it has organized, so they can use it in their career guidance services.
“This is now the scenario as far as employment opportunities in Western Visayas is concerned. This is something that everybody especially our labor workforce should consider,” Siaton added.