DOLE’s Laguesma: Lower salary in Philippines makes jobs in medical field, archi, engineering hard to fill

Jobs in the medical field, architecture and engineering, among others, are in-demand but hard to fill in due to lack of wage and non-wage benefits for workers in the country, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) said Thursday.

Labor Secretary Bienvenido Laguesma made the admission when asked if higher salaries for workers in other countries is a factor as to why such jobs are hard to fill despite being in demand.

“The hard-to-fill ones are jobs in the medical field such as nurses and med tech (medical technology), architecture, engineering both civil and mechanical ones...there is also in Information Technology, business process outsourcing for sales, cyber security experts, web and app developers....,” Laguesma said in an ANC interview.

“There’s also delivery riders, virtual assistants, e-commerce jobs, service crew, bilingual and multilingual speakers, tourist guides, waiters...these are the ones we see that are hard to fill and ones the companies need, including those in emerging industries. The COVID-19 pandemic restrictions resulted in cutting back on operations, and the companies are now catching up [as the situation is improving]. Kasama sa dahilan ang sweldo (The lower salary here is a factor), and that is why we need to make adjustments on benefits being received by our workers, including the health care sector,” he added.

Laguesma said while the government concedes that the salary hike is needed, it is something that cannot be done in an instant and as a result, the state is also looking at non-wage benefits to encourage workers to be employed in the Philippines rather than work overseas.

“The government is not insensitive. We need to address the needs of our workers, but a wage hike that is at par with salary in working abroad is not something that we can do in an instant,” Laguesma said.

“It is a tough task [to keep our workers here], but the benefits of being with your family are also unquantifiable. That is why we are looking at non-wage benefits to complement and supplement wages,” he added.

Such non-wage benefits, Laguesma said, include:

• health care
• affordable housing
• tapping micro, small and medium enterprises  to increase productivity by providing skills training
• transport subsidy
• access to affordable basic commodities such as Kadiwa ng Pasko, among others

Laguesma said such non-wage benefits also address the problem of underemployment.

“The challenge really is providing jobs which are not only of quality but of permanent status. Four million out of the 47.1 million in the workforce are minimum wage earners, while six million or 14% of 47.1 million are underemployed,” he said.

“We could say six million people are looking for additional jobs, and that's what we are also focusing on,” he added. — RSJ, GMA Integrated News