Upskilling, modernizing workforce sought to fill high-paying jobs

Local

FOR MANY Filipino workers, simply having a job is no longer enough.

In a fast-changing world driven by technology, automation, and innovation, keeping a job or landing a better one now demands more than just hard work. It requires new skills, digital fluency, and the ability to adapt.

As the Philippine economy begins transitioning into the fifth industrial revolution, the Department of Labor and Employment-Central Visayas (DOLE-7) is urging a stronger focus on upskilling and modernizing the workforce to meet rapidly evolving industry demands.

Lawyer Roy Buenafe, DOLE-7 director, emphasized that this new economic era, marked by human-machine collaboration, artificial intelligence, and smart technologies, requires Filipino workers to possess more advanced technical and digital competencies.

“The academe plays a very important role. TESDA, which is under DOLE, has aggressive programs to address job mismatch — a problem we’ve faced for a long time…We may not solve everything immediately, but at least we are working on preventing bigger problems in the future,” Buenafe said.

He said that while the country’s labor market has shown signs of recovery, with the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reporting a slight drop in the unemployment rate to 4.3 percent in January 2025, underemployment, low job quality, and skills mismatch continue to plague the economy.

“It’s good that our unemployment rate has dropped slightly, but it doesn’t necessarily mean our economy is already doing well,” Buenafe said.

“We also have to look at underemployment. Many employees now need extra income because of the high cost of daily living, especially for our ordinary workers — transportation, market prices, and basic needs are still rising,” he added.

Underemployment remains high, with 6.47 million Filipinos, or 13.3 percent of the labor force, still seeking longer work hours or better-paying jobs, only a marginal improvement from 13.7 percent in the same period last year.

Buenafe warned that focusing solely on unemployment figures risks ignoring deeper, structural problems in the labor market.

“We cannot say that even if unemployment is low, our economy is already strong. We still need to be vigilant, especially here in Central Visayas,” he said.

The PSA also recorded a decline in average weekly work hours, from 42.2 in January 2024 to 40.4 in January 2025. It suggests that more workers are engaged in part-time or irregular jobs.

Meanwhile, the number of individuals who reported working only one hour a week rose significantly, from 34,000 to 59,000 year-on-year.

Buenafe pointed to the persistent mismatch between available jobs and the qualifications of job seekers.

While high-paying roles such as Sales Campaign Manager, SaaS Product Manager, and Lead Generation Specialist are in demand, with salaries ranging from P30,000 to P180,000 per month, many of these require specialized training or digital fluency that most workers lack.

“We really need intervention. We must upskill and upgrade our workforce. Many high-paying jobs today are difficult to fill because we lack qualified candidates…We cannot just focus on increasing employment numbers. We have to ensure the quality of jobs improves too,” Buenafe said.

He reiterated the need for collaboration between government, industry, and educational institutions in reshaping the country’s labor force.(TGP)