Almost 6,000 jobs await Ilonggos in online job fair

Almost 6,000 job opportunities await job seekers in Western Visayas as the massive job fair organized annually by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) goes online amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

A total of 5,793 jobs offered by participating government agencies, private companies, construction firms, and business processes outsourcing (BPO) companies are available at the Trabaho, Negosyo, Kabuhayan (TNK) job fair of DOLE-6 today, May 1, 2021.

From the usual annual job fairs wherein thousands of job seekers flock at the venue, this year’s job fair will be done online in partnership with online platform, “mynimo.com“, according to DOLE 6 regional director Cyril Ticao.

“As of Thursday, 34 employers have registered for the online job fair offering 5,884 jobs mostly coming from the BPO sector and construction firms,” he said in a virtual press conference on Thursday.

Interested applicants may register through the site, https://www.mynimo.com/dole6applicants.

The online job fair is also seen to help jobless Ilonggos who were displaced due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

In its presentation of the 2020 Economic Performance of Western Visayas, Meylene Rosales, regional director of the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) 6 said that the COVID-19 pandemic has crippled the labor force of the region as restrictions and community quarantine forced businesses to retrench their workers or close down.

According to Rosales, while the gradual reopening of the economy allowed more people to rejoin the labor force, the employment rate in the region still contracted by 3.47% from 95.3 % in 2019 to 92.1% in 2021 due to lockdowns and retrenchment of many businesses.

Unemployment also increased to 7.9% equivalent to 208,000 jobless individuals in 2020 during the lockdown period.

“Unemployment rose from 4.7 percent to 7.9 percent translating to 208,000 jobless individuals during the imposition of lockdowns,” she said.

Meanwhile, 1,013 establishments resorted to the retrenchment of their workers resulting to 9,422 displaced workers in the region in 2020.

A total of 204 establishments also shutdown in 2020 affecting 2,112 employees, this is 140% higher than the only 85 businesses that closed in 2019. (ERS)