By BENJIE OLIVEROS
Bulatlat perspective
One major issue that the incoming Duterte administration has to address is youth unemployment. The government’s National Economic Development Authority is alarmed at the high unemployment rate of the youth. According to the Labor Force Survey, 50.1 percent of the 2.594 million unemployed people, in April 2016, are from the youth, comprising the 15 to 24 age group. This translates to 1.3 million unemployed youth.
The ratio of the unemployed youth to the total labor force stood at 14.6 percent, more than twice the 6.1 percent national unemployment rate. Added to this, 23.8 percent of the young working population was neither in school nor in the labor force. As such, around 4.7 million young Filipinos are underutilized.
The outgoing Aquino government attributed the high unemployment rate, especially among the youth, to a so-called skills-job mismatch. To address this, Aquino rushed the implementation of its K+12 program, which added two years to secondary education. The last two years, Senior High School, are supposed to prepare the youth for employment. Thus, a recently opened school, which caters to senior high school students, boasts of a curriculum that is tailor fit to the job needs of corporations. For example, if banks ask for bank tellers or employees who process loans, this track would be offered to students who would be taught the skills needed for bank tellers or in the processing of loans. The same would be done for Business Process Outsourcing companies, which claim that they constantly need to recruit and hire call center agents, accounting clerks, for medical transcriptions, telemarketing and the like.
Logical? Well it appears to be, but the problem is much more complicated than that.
First, teaching the youth a specific set of skills may facilitate their employment in the short term. But it develops them along a very specific set of skills, which would not prepare them for employment elsewhere when the need for the specific line of work they were trained for decreases. Also, it would limit their social mobility, as they would not be prepared for higher responsibilities and more complicated tasks.
Second, this does not provide for their whole-rounded development, including the ability for critical thinking, a sense of the nation’s history and value, and appreciation for the culture and the arts. They would be trained merely to provide cheap labor for companies.
Third, and the most important, the solution of the previous Aquino administration to the problem of youth unemployment is too simplistic.
The problem of youth unemployment is a global phenomenon. Global youth unemployment was estimated at 12.6 percent or around 73 million unemployed young people in 2013. And according to the report Youth Unemployment: A Global Challenge, there has not been much change since 2009, the year the world plunged into a crisis.
According to the same report: “The problem is particularly severe in the Middle East and in North Africa, where youth unemployment currently stands at an estimated 29.6% and 23.9%, respectively. Youth unemployment rates are lowerin the developed economies (17.5%) and in South-East Asia (13.5%), Latin America (13.3%), sub-Saharan Africa (11.7%), East Asia (10.0%) and South Asia (9.6%).”
Generally, the worse impact the economic crisis, which was brought about by neoliberalism, had on a country, the worse is its problem of youth unemployment. Refer to the data on youth unemployment among OECD countries, which are said to be the most developed countries in the world. https://data.oecd.org/unemp/youth-unemployment-rate.htm. Among these countries, South Africa, Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy have the worst problems. These countries were hit most by the recent economic crisis.
In the US, for example, youth unemployment reached an all-time high of 19.5 percent, when the country was suffering the worst impact of the crisis, which imploded in 2008-2009. On the other hand, youth unemployment reached a record low of 7.8 percent in September 1956, when the US was at the peak of prosperity, especially since it emerged intact from World War II and, as such, led and profited from the post-war reconstruction period under the Marshall Plan.
“By 1956 a majority held white-collar jobs, working as corporate managers, teachers, salespersons and office employees. Some firms granted a guaranteed annual wage, long-term employment contracts and other benefits.” (The Postwar Economy: 1945-1960)
In the Philippines, despite the claims of economic growth by the Aquino government, youth unemployment, at 14.6 percent, is higher than the average in Southeast Asia, 13.5 percent. If the data on NEET (Not in Employment, Education or Training) among the youth is considered, the Philippines is also worse off with 23.8 percent when the rate in OECD countries is at 15 percent in 2012. With the reported increase in dropouts, due to the implementation of the senior high school requirement, the country’s NEET would expectedly increase.
Among the drivers of high youth unemployment identified by the report Youth Unemployment: A Global Challenge, are “structural economic problems,” which include “missed opportunities for industrialization and hence a shortage of jobs for skilled workers.”
Of course, the same report echoed the analysis and recommendations of mainstream neoliberal economists that inflexible labor market regulations that benefit older (especially public-sector) workers, and training and tertiary education that bypass labor market needs as other factors. It’s as if current “flexible” labor market regulations, which resulted in massive contractualization of labor, are not bad enough. And that the current education systems of underdeveloped countries have not been patterned enough to the needs of multinational corporations and the need for cheap labor of developed economies.
Nevertheless, it recognized the direct correlation between industrialization and job generation. Progressive groups have pointed this out repeatedly.
For as long as neoliberal policies are in place – which makes the country dependent on foreign investments and imports to provide for the country’s basic needs for products, goods, and services, which, in turn, undermine the development of the country’s industry and agriculture – and the country patterns its education system to cater to the needs for cheap labor of multinational corporations, here and abroad, youth unemployment would continue as a scourge to the nation.
The way to solve youth unemployment is to develop the country’s basic industries and agriculture, to provide free education for the youth up to the tertiary level, and to pattern the economy and the education system of the country to provide for the needs of the nation primarily. 
