PBEd: Skills training to pave way for better jobs for the youth

Industry-led advocacy group Philippine Business for Education (PBEd) backs the World Bank’s (WB) call to strengthen and make accessible skills training programs to boost youth employment in the country.

In a report released, WB urged the Philippines to create more and better jobs for the youth to strengthen post-pandemic economic recovery in the country. The report also emphasized the urgency of crafting targeted policies to facilitate job creation and ensure that young workers are not left behind.

WB Senior Economist Yoonyoung Cho stressed that “measures like skills training, job search assistance, wage subsidies, public works programs, and entrepreneurship promotion should be further strengthened.”

To align education and skills of youth to the needs of the industry, PBEd underscored the importance of work-based training.

“As jobs are pathways to a better quality of life, skills training is a vehicle that can help them get there. This will set up our workforce and economy for greater competitiveness. We must work together to support our young workers as they start the engine and get things up to speed as they enter the labor market,” PBEd Executive Director Justine Raagas said.

PBEd is currently pushing for institutionalization of the work-based training model through YouthWorks PH, a private sector driven skills training program for unemployed and out-of-school youth.

The program provides access to free online mentoring, technical-vocational learning and work-based training provided by industry partners. With this model, 57 percent of youth graduates were immediately hired after training, and 83 percent were no longer considered youth not in education, employment, or training.

The WB report also noted that efforts on skills development should catch up with future of work trends.

“The growth of digital jobs must be matched with the development of digital skills. With automation, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning slowly taking over many jobs, systems for lifelong learning must be established to ensure workforce competitiveness and productivity,” Raagas said.

A Labor Market Intelligence report commissioned by PBEd, showed that there are high levels of underutilization and mismatch rates in the analytics and AI sector. The sector, which cuts through and provides services in different industries, has registered a 70 percent skills mismatch rate in agriculture, 56 percent in IT-BPM, and 50 percent in manufacturing. The same report also revealed that supply of labor professionals in the analytics sector remains a problem since there is still a lack of specialized courses and analytics teachers to produce competent analytics workers.

WB also stated that the Philippine workforce lags behind its regional peers in foundational skills. To support efforts in addressing this, PBEd partnered with six local governments to increase workforce proficiency for future jobs through JobsNext.

The program provides skills training for youth for emerging jobs in the digital economy. A nationwide skills voucher program for lifelong learning is also being pushed through the JobsNext bill.