House Ways And Means Chair Joey Sarte Salceda (Albay, 2nd District) expresses concern on the possible 2.4 million vacant jobs for the skilled workers if the education and training system does not improve.

Salceda urged the country’s policymakers to come up with a significant reform for the aftermath of the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19).

The congressman released the warning that the country would face a looming skills gap wherein unskilled workers would struggle to find a job while jobs requiring skills would have a hard time finding a fit candidate.

The report predicted that around 2.4 million skilled job or 6% of the workforce would be unfilled until the next decade.

“This will be a silent crisis, because it will only make itself seen gradually and in the households whose workers cannot find jobs and, in the businesses, where skilled jobs remain unfilled,” he said. “In the aggregate, however, it will definitely bog us down.”

Additionally, the House Economic Recovery and Stimulus Cluster head reiterated that displaced jobs brought about by the COVID-19 are unlikely to return “simply because there will no longer be any need for them, even if businesses recover. We have all moved online. Expect painful permanent shrinkages in the low-skill service sector, and a drag in real wages due to the oversupply of unskilled work, unless we are willing to make meaningful policy changes now.”

“The bottomline of my report is: we need to prepare the workforce for a new economy. Our current education and training system, where we place value of diplomas and not skills, will just not do,” Salceda ended.