Mismatch Between Educational Training and Actual Jobs

INTRODUCTION

Education is the fundamental need of a person in creating one’s future and having a comfortable

life. So as early as graduating from Basic Education, fresh graduates contemplate what degree

they will take in college to have a secure career path for their future. Most students consider job

opportunities for certain courses, how much will they earn in that field, and also the skills they

have at the moment that can be used in the degree they want to take. However, this study will

show that a various amount of people ends up taking a career that is different from their degree.

As per the research “Surveying the Extent and Wage Consequences of Education-Job

Mismatches in the Philippine Labor Market by Philippine Institute for Development Studies

(PIDS)” in a job analysis, 40% of employees are overeducated. Similarly, undereducated

employees said to be around 30% under the analysis used by PIDS.

Given the economic situation of the Philippines, it is no surprise that a lot of young adults

struggles in applying for a job that is related to their degree and even they got the right job for

their chosen degree most of them are underpaid for lack of experience. According to the

Associated Labor Unions-Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (ALU-TUCP) 2017, one

million college graduates this year face a grim future.

“We don’t want to give these young [people] any false hopes. We don’t want to discourage them

either, but these are the issues that confront our new graduates,” Alan Tanjusay, ALU

spokesperson, said in a statement on Philippine Daily Inquirer.

In this article, we will explore the original research about “Labor Mismatch in the Philippines:

Analysis of the Impact of Education-Occupation Mismatch on Wage and Analysis of the

Beveridge Curve” M. D. Jasa, et. al. (2013). The intention of this research-based article is to

implement an output that will help school organizations to track the graduates’ careers and be

able to help young adults to have a secure future with their chosen career paths.

METHODOLOGY

Defining Educational Attainment and two types of mismatches. The first step is to define

educational attainment and how it affects the distribution of income in an economy and

eventually to labor-education mismatch. It is known that the reason why Philippines has minimal

job opportunities is that the economy is not doing well for as long as anyone can remember. It is

just one of the factors why people apply for a job that is not aligned with their field or the

education they attained. No good economy will affect job seekers to end up in a job they are not

matched.

There are different kinds of mismatches. Spatial mismatch refers to the disparity between where

people who need jobs live and where jobs are available. An example by Buchan & Calman

(2004). While, Skills mismatch refers to the situation where the workers’ skills and education are

not adequate for the demands of jobs in the current economy. There is a mismatch between the

skills workers possess and what jobs require, what economists call an imbalance between the

supply of and demand for human capital. Handel (2003). Mismatches in education and labor is

the effect of one’s country’s economical status. Either a person’s skill is a requirement for the

job or a person’s attainment is not ample to the current situation of the economy.