The country needs to implement policies to improve education and skills of the workforce which is important to increasing productivity employment.

The Philippines-United Nations Partnership Framework for Sustainable Development 2019-2023 cited the completion of secondary education and the acquisition of higher level technical skills especially among young cohorts to boost workforce education.

On the demand side, the report noted the poor quality of jobs, for which deep structural weaknesses in the agriculture sector have played a significant role.

“However a rapidly growing services sector could, if leveraged well, spur the creation of high productivity, higher wage work opportunities in both services and industry, while structural reforms in the agriculture sector slowly materialize,” it said.

The report attributed this opportunity to the globalization of both manufacturing and services, particularly the increased dependence of the former on the latter, which can potentially “increase commerce, promote local sourcing, and enhance value addition.”

“An expanding range of sectors also require services as a necessary condition for investment,” it said.

It pointed out that 2022 and 2030 poverty reductions targets using the national poverty threshold are not on track despite a decrease in the absolute number of poor and extremely poor individuals since 1990.

Poverty incidence was 2 percentage points higher, and the absolute numbers of poor are 15 times higher among the employed than among the unemployed in both 2012 and 2015, it said.

It added the employed were also as likely to be poor than those out of the labor force, and were more likely to be poor than the unemployed.