Why Economy is Growing but Still Not Enough Jobs

Agatha Diane M. Honrade

Grade 10 Saint Magdalene of Canossa
Usually, an ebullient labor market is the token in the booming and surging of a countrys
economy. However, in the article Why Is There A Job Crisis? from Ibon Facts & Figures, it is
stated, The Philippines has been experiencing economic growth, but for this growth to be
meaningful, it has to create jobs decent jobs that enable Filipinos to meet their daily needs.
The Philippine economy soars, making it the 39 th largest in the world and is expected to
be the 2nd fastest growing economy in the world by 2015, despite it is in the midst of a jobs crisis.
The article also stated that the Aquino administration have satisfied its promise by making more
than a million jobs in its first year of administration, but less than a million in the preceding
years. However, these jobs where countervailed by a huge number of jobs lost in agriculture and
fishing. The administration also tried to solve the jobs crisis by facilitating employment through
different job fairs.
The article has given many points why there is a jobs crisis. Although the government
had generated jobs, they were of poor quality, low-paying and uncertain. Most sectors are also
hiring more non-regular workers than regular workers. Furthermore, there is an inability to create
jobs for the Filipino youths. The main reason for the joblessness of the youth is not anymore
because of low educational attainment, but because of inadequate generation of jobs. Moreover,
the growth sectors are also not creating sufficient jobs for the growing number of the labor force.
Shockingly, almost 84 Filipino employees are losing their jobs each day, according to a 2012
statistics. These are why the self-employed and the underemployed workers are gradually
increasing.
The question is: how can we still say that the economy is growing? The Philippine
economy is having a robust growth due to the strong domestic consumption and the expansion of
public and private investments, which is yet to generate jobs for the Filipinos.
The challenge for the government today is to create a stronger link between the economic
growth and development by creating a variety of reasonable paying decent jobs of great quality.