MANILA, 19 April 2008 — There is a shortage of qualified applicants for specific company positions despite a long beeline of job applicants, a survey by the Department of Labor and Employment showed.
While most of the big local companies are preoccupied with hiring the best and the brightest people in the midst of talent shortage, this is the major concern of most companies’ human resources in the National Capital Region, said Labor Secretary Marianito Roque said in a press statement.
Big companies find it hard to recruit qualified applicants among an army of unemployed people in the metropolis.
Unemployment rate in the Philippines stood at 7.8 percent in 2007, lower than the 8.1 percent unemployment rate in 2006, according to the Bureau of Labor and Employment Statistics (BLES).
Unemployed males are at 8.1 percent while unemployed females registered at 7.4 percent.
Twelve human resource issues were listed in the rider questionnaire that was incorporated in the third quarter Labor Turnover Survey (LTS) covering the October-December 2007 period where Roque based his pronouncement.
The respondents which were drawn from the list of top 5,000 enterprises were asked to rate each concern according to their relative importance.
The rating is a choice between “high priority” and “low priority.”
“Results showed that recruitment shortage of qualified applicants was considered high in importance by 39.3 percent of the total respondents. This was closely related to high labor turnover rate which ranked second with 30.5 percent response rate and pirating of workers which ranked 10th with 16.3 percent response rate,” the labor secretary said.
Nonetheless, the proportion varied across the sub-sectors — from a high of 44.1 percent in real estate, renting, and business activities to a low of 8.3 percent in electricity, gas, and water supply.
Theft, fraud, and willful breach of trust ranked as the fourth concern at 24.5 percent.
Enterprises engaged in financial intermediation recorded the highest proportion in terms of lack of motivation (23.8 percent) and sexual harassment (31 percent).
Concerns about lack of skills were posted highest in hotels and restaurants (28.6 percent).
Low productivity and lack of work ethics occupied the fifth and sixth positions at 21.3 percent and 20.5 percent, respectively. Across sub-sectors, low productivity was a major concern in real estate, renting and business activities at 29.4 percent and hotels and restaurants at 28.6 percent.
At the bottom of the human resource concerns were lack of company loyalty and interpersonal problems at 12.8 percent and 6.5 percent, respectively. The highest proportion was reported in financial intermediation (35.7 percent) and the lowest in hotels and restaurants (14.3 percent).
