A government task force and its private sector partners are recalibrating a program that aimed but failed to create a million jobs in 2021, to focus on businesses that will create, save or transform jobs in 2022.
Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez in a press conference yesterday said the National Employment Recovery Strategy Task Force and the Employers Confederation of the Philippines have so far created only 600,000 jobs at the end of 2021, including those in the information technology-business process management sector.
The partnership aimed to immediately create jobs in construction, manufacturing particularly in the semiconductor and electronics sector, tourism and hospitality and export.
Lopez said the task force will continue to work on cutting the unemployment rate to the pre-pandemic range of 5 to 5.5 percent from the average of 6.5 percent in 2021.
Still, Lopez said that average is a decline from 17.6 percent in 2020.
He said there is an overall increase of 2.9 million jobs as of November 2021 from January 2020 in the agriculture, wholesale and retail, administration and sport and construction. – Irma Isip
